An expert in e-commerce has blamed the high costs of gadgets in Nigeria on the large number of middlemen that handle a product before it gets to the final consumer.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Sim Shagaya, chief executive of Konga.com, a Nigerian e-commerce website, said though the popular notion was that retailers of IT devices inflate the prices to make excessive profits, some of them are not to blame.
“For us, we (Konga.com) are not trying to make excessive profits. If we look at the world right now, you’ll see that we are at the edge of the global supply chain of products. There are not much things that get here with liquidity and the volume they should get,” he said.
He lamented the numerous numbers of middlemen in the nation’s ICT sector.
“If you look at it right now, before something gets to a consumer in Nigeria, it probably will go through two times the number of middlemen than it should normally go through,” he added.
To tackle this, he said companies should be encouraged to set up warehouses for their products in Nigeria.
“So whether it’s offline or online, you’ll see those supply chains improve when the companies start warehousing locally. This will lead to a reduction in the supplier cost to the ones paid by the retailer in the UK or US,” he said.
On what Konga.com is doing to address this, he said they are already working directly with some manufacturers.
“We are already working with leading brands in the country. [For instance], we are working with Nokia directly, we are also working with Samsung directly. Our mission is to try and bring quality products to consumers at affordable prices through working with product manufacturers as closely as possible,” he said.
