An e-commerce expert has blamed low online trust, mainstream market adoption and pan-African payment gateway integration as some of the primary challenges facing the industry in West Africa.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Dapo Adekola, director of BrandNubians, owners of Shopistry.com.ng, also highlighted logistics and the high cost of entry for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as being detrimental to the growth of e-commerce.
Adekola noted low internet penetration numbers is another challenge in countries within the sub-region, except in Nigeria.
On the issue of internet payment security, he said BrandNubians is adopting a full lifecycle approach via continual evaluation and prevention of security threats.
“Security will always be one of our paramount concerns and we adopt a full lifecycle approach to it,” the Oxford University graduate said.
“Continually evaluating and preventing security threats before they occur, we utilise enterprise tools like SSL, daily enterprise portal scans, robust Checkout and Payment Gateway security to ensure the security and authenticity of all transactions across our e-commerce platform.”
Adekola is currently in the United Kingdom and will be speaking on Saturday at a pan-African conference in Oxford.
His speech will be focused on the various challenges working against e-commerce in the West African sub-region.
