E-commerce penetration in the SADC region: Consolidating and moving forward

E-Commerce, and recently mobile commerce (m-Commerce: ePayment, eTickets, eBanking etc.), has shown a lot of potential for development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc given the growth in e-adoption of the region. Partly, this has been attributed to sound policies and initiatives thereby creating an enabling environment for e-Commerce to thrive. However, despite this positive note, there are also challenges that are being faced on an everyday basis concerning e-Commerce business and how this impacts the SME (Small Medium Enterprise) sector. This chapter aims to present these challenges and recommend on what should be done in order to consolidate and move forward the adoption of e-Commerce applications in the SADC region. It looks at exploratory studies of e-Commerce penetration specifically from four SADC member countries: South Africa (arguably currently considered the most economically sound and leader of e-Commerce utilization in Africa), Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Arguably, a look at these four countries is believed to be adequately representative of the SADC bloc. In Africa, other than e-Commerce, there has been a transition (change of business models) where businesses are now done using m-Commerce (distributed dynamic computing where the host and agent keep on changing their locations). This chapter also reviews the growth of this new business model, and further looks at Africa's infrastructure preparedness to adopt this new business model. It also looks at mobile phone subscription rates in the SADC region, level of trust in these business models, and the general value that this kind of business undertaking brings.