The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says Ghana is one of the countries in the world where just about 2 per cent or less of the population shop online.
Launching a new e-commerce initiative at the ongoing UNCTAD in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday July 18, 2016, the organization said while more than 70 per cent of people are shopping online in Denmark, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, the story is different in most developing countries. In Bangladesh, Ghana and Indonesia, for example, just 2 per cent or less of the population buy online.
UNCTAD says electronic commerce or e-commerce is worth around $22.1 trillion in 2015, up 38 per cent from 2013, and urged developing countries to grasp the rapidly growing opportunity of e-commerce or risk falling quickly behind.
It said the new initiative, called “eTrade for All”, brings international organizations, donors and businesses under one umbrella, easing developing country access to cutting-edge technical assistance and giving donors more options for funding.
According to new UNCTAD data, e-commerce includes both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C), respectively valued at around $19.9 trillion and $2.2 trillion each, adding that this trade is mostly domestic, but is becoming more and more international.
The data shows that e-commerce is growing rapidly, with emerging economies accounting for most of this growth.
“China is now the world’s largest B2C e-commerce market, both in terms of sales and in number of online shoppers. Brazil, India, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation have also all moved into the top 10 e-commerce markets,” it added.
“A huge divide is opening between countries that are exploiting those opportunities and those that are not,” Mukhisa Kituyi, UNCTAD Secretary-General was quoted as saying in a press release.
UNCTAD believes that the initiative will help developing countries in seven policy areas, including e-commerce assessments, information and communications technology infrastructure, payments, trade logistics, legal and regulatory frameworks, skills development and financing for e-commerce.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
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