Mobile money, warehouse forwarding and GPS-based delivery are helping e-commerce expand across sub-Saharan Africa, even as low incomes and patchy address systems keep online shopping concentrated in major cities.
African consumers are increasingly accessing brands such as Amazon and Walmart through package-forwarding firms that bridge structural gaps in sub-Saharan Africa, where the retailers have little or no direct presence in many markets. Companies including Senegalese startup Afrety and global logistics group Aramex provide warehouse addresses in the United States, Europe and China, consolidate purchases and ship them onward, while local delivery networks use GPS to reach customers in cities that often lack formal street addresses. The model also works around limited access to traditional banking. Customers can pay through mobile money (phone-based digital cash accounts) that can be topped up with cash at kiosks, a system used widely in Senegal and elsewhere on the continent. Afrety, founded in 2018, says it has expanded from linking informal air-traveller networks between France and Senegal to handling four to five metric tons by air and two to three containers by sea each week. Aramex, which acquired MyUS in 2022 and also runs Shop and Ship, says sub-Saharan Africa is among its fastest-growing regions and plans to double revenue from shipping goods there by 2030. Demand is strongest for electronics, apparel, toys, agricultural machinery and auto parts. Yet growth remains constrained because most e-commerce spending is concentrated in or near large cities where incomes are higher. Tech Cabal Insights estimates internet penetration at around 43% of Africa's 1.5 billion people, but says only a small share can afford to shop online; in Nigeria only 1 in 3 internet users shops online, while in Central Africa the figure is about 1 in 20. South Africa remains the clear outlier. Mastercard figures show online retail volumes there have grown by close to 35% annually over the past five years to about 140 billion rand in 2025, or $7.26 billion. That has attracted direct investment from major retailers, with Amazon launching its first online marketplace in South Africa in 2024 and the first Walmart-branded stores in Africa opening in Johannesburg last year. Elsewhere, competition is intensifying among intermediaries and local platforms such as Jumia, which operates in eight sub-Saharan African countries and says it expects to break even this year while pushing back against Temu and Shein. Executives at Jumia and Aramex identified Nigeria as one of the markets with the greatest potential, with the government citing United Nations figures that put total e-commerce at around $75 billion in 2025.