Infographic depicting the years that African countries became independent. Happy Africa Day!
(via prepaidafrica)
THE diverse nature of the African consumer requires that businesses heading into Africa adopt a local approach rather than just a continental approach, a new study shows.
A recent report by Nielsen titled The Diverse People of Africa aims to shed light on the different African consumers and how best to reach them. Nielsen’s business leader for strategy development in Africa, Graham Marshall , says most companies have a continental-wide strategy for Africa.
But the local level of execution was even more important than this.
“What works in Kenya won’t necessarily work in Ethiopia,” he says. Consumer spending and shopping patterns differ widely across countries, the study finds.
“Nigerians spend the most on consumer packaged products whereas Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya spend least. In Ethiopia, only daily essentials like tea, coffee and cooking oil have high penetration and consumers are likely to shop for products on discount.”
The study shows that Tanzania has the highest number of categories with penetration above 75%, and consumers are likely to keep up with the newest trends in fashion and technology.
Infographic!
Africa Mobile Subscriptions -96% Prepaid
(via Wireless Intelligence — Analysis — Dashboard, Africa 2012
Africa has become a pivot continent. Between 2000 and 2010, its real gross domestic product grew 4.7% per year, and Africans now spend more on goods and services than a similarly sized population of Indians. Foreign direct investment in Africa has grown more than fivefold since 2000.
For years, cash-strapped African states had to turn almost exclusively to the IMF, World Bank and Western governments for financial help. They accepted Western aid with deep reluctance in many cases, because it often came with demands for democratic reforms and greater openness to Western investment. But in 2010 alone, China’s trade with Africa expanded by more than 43%, according to official Chinese trade data, and it replaced the U.S. as Africa’s largest trade partner.
Africa can now expect multinational and state-owned companies from developed and developing states to compete for access to African consumers and favorable investment terms. This isn’t a story of the West losing out to China, because both will continue to profit in Africa. The winners here are all the newly resilient African governments.
In the next ten years, Nigeria and other African countries will experience a boom in consumer spending to the tune of $1.5 trillion, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has predicted.
The EIU explained that as Africans move to the cities and acquire more disposable income and the middle class grows, demand for modern goods and services will surge.
The EIU which stated this on a notification brochure about a major summit on the future of cities in Africa, scheduled to hold in Lagos, also said the continent’s population would rise beyond 1.5 billion. It added that the most compelling growth opportunities are in Africa’s cities.
A report by the EIU released earlier, said that by 2050, Africa’s population would have progressed to 2 billion and would have overtaken that of India (1.6bn) and of China (1.4bn).
Nigeria’s population will lead the pack in Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Africa. Tailing them will be the three East African partners—Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda (with a combined population of 110million) the report said.
Furthermore, by 2015, the proportion of Africa’s youth (under 15 years) is expected to rise to 45 percent of the total population. This raises some interesting possibilities—they will want to learn, earn, and burn their earnings.
At the same time, Africa is urbanising rapidly and about 40 percent of the population now live in cities (a lower ratio than in China but higher than that in India). The youthful demographic is urbanising the fastest.
According to the report, by 2030, the continent’s top 18 cities could have a combined spending power of US$1.3trillion. By 2050, 63 percent of Africa’s population will be urban. Africa’s consumers can be divided into three main tiers, and businesses will need to build their strategies accordingly.
The candidacy of an African woman, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to lead the World Bank represents a historic opportunity to strengthen the organisation in its mission to attack global poverty. However, the fatalist view is that Okonjo-Iweala cannot win because she is not American. Fortunately, in this case idealism and power politics can align. Okonjo-Iweala can and should win, but it will take effort. Here is a five-stage scenario of how events could play out.
The candidacy of an African woman, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to lead the World Bank represents a historic opportunity to strengthen the organisation in its mission to attack global poverty. However, the fatalist view is that Okonjo-Iweala cannot win because she is not American. Fortunately, in this case idealism and power politics can align. Okonjo-Iweala can and should win, but it will take effort. Here is a five-stage scenario of how events could play out.
