We look at the e-commerce struggle from the economic perspective. E-commerce has struggled a lot in 2017, and we ask the whys.Efritin.com shut down this year. Konga and a bunch of companies had layoffs. All of it points to one thing; E-commerce is hard in Nigeria and we need to talk about why.1. The market is not as big as you’d think.In July 2016, Kinnevik, a company which owned 34% of Konga at the time, released a report that showed that Konga had only 184,000 active customers. This is tiny, for a country with a population estimated to be at 180 million. So any pitch deck you see for an e-commerce site or even internet company, that says their target audience is “180 million people yen yen yen”, be rest assured it’s bollocks. So, why is this e-commerce market not as big as you’d expect?2. There’s not enough disposable income.Disposable income is the money left after deduction of things like taxes. When total income is low, savings are low. It’s a vicious cycle of lows.
