No bank card? No address? No problem. Shoppers in Africa increasingly are buying online from big brands such as Amazon or Walmart even though they have no physical presence on much of the continent.

Among those benefiting ​from the shift are local and foreign package-forwarding companies that use technology and increasing internet penetration in Africa to overcome hurdles, including a lack of formal street addresses and customers with no ‌access to traditional banks.

One is Senegalese startup, Afrety, which provides a snapshot of how Africa’s shoppers can rely on intermediaries to buy from the United States (US), Europe and China and receive the package at their doorstep.

Afrety’s service provides shoppers with delivery addresses at warehouses in France, the United States and China. Multiple purchases can be consolidated for each customer and repackaged for dispatch to West Africa. On arrival, customs duties are paid, benefiting local governments.
Customers without bank cards can pay by digital, mobile money accounts that ​can be charged with cash at kiosks. Mobile money is used widely in Senegal, along with other parts of Africa, instead of conventional banking.

Once the packages arrive in Senegal, motorbikes and vans parked outside ​Afrety’s depot deliver using Global Positioning System across a major city like Dakar.

“You have to be very, very, very flexible. That’s the key word,” Souane Diop, the 34-year-old Chief Executive Officer, told ⁠Reuters, outside his depot filled with packages labelled Amazon and other international brands.

Diop said the company started in 2018 with the aim of connecting informal networks of air travellers between France and Senegal.
From small beginnings it has grown ​to four to five metric tons by air and two to three containers by sea each week. To keep costs low, Afrety rents its warehouse in France and uses partners in the US and China to handle trade ​there.

–Reuters–