With a history and reputation as savvy traders, Africans are accustomed to buying second-hand and recyled items offline at markets created specifically for them. The idea is that the goods are mostly of high quality and cheaper than new.
The Togolese port of Lomé has become a West African hub for trading second-hand goods, AlJazeera reported. Market traders in Togo are making huge profits selling unwanted clothes from the U.S. and Europe. The business has become so popular that people come from all over West Africa to buy recycled clothes.
Now online business is booming in Africa for used items, with new sites showing up around the continent and sales from online marketplaces going through the stratosphere, PCWorld reports.
A variety of new online marketplaces have been launched across Africa in recent years including Kaymu.com, Mamymarket.com, Locanto.com, Myjoymarket.com, Jiji.ng, Cheki.com, and OLX. All rely on winning and building the trust of their users, according to PCWorld. Sellers and buyers are vetted before being permitted to do business on the websites.
Skyrocketing Internet penetration in Africa is a contributing factor, said Ejiro Esiri, regional SEO head at Kaymu. “The business opportunities are there for people to grab them,” Esiri said. “There is a big market that keeps growing and as a business that used to be primarily offline, the online marketplace model provides an opportunity to reach people in different areas.”
A new entry in the market is Sweden-based Saltside Technologies, which launched several sites for used items elsewhere before launching Efritin.com in Nigerian last week. Prior to that, Saltside launched Tonaton.com in Ghana, ikman.lk in Sri Lanka and Bikroy.com in Bangladesh.
Tonaton.com is considered Ghana’s largest online marketplace, with over 130,000 ads listed and an estimated 1 million monthly visitors.
Efritin.com has competition in Nigeria including Mobofree, which has more than 500,000 active classified ads therey.
Based in Lithuania, Mobofree is a social marketplace that offers Nigerians, Ghanaians, Ugandans and Zimbabweans an online venue to buy, sell and swap used products. Last week, Mobofree said it saw a 274-percent increase in value of goods exchanged on its platform in 2014 to $1.97 billion U.S. — 30 percent higher than the 2015 forecast.
“Second-hand goods is a huge category everywhere around the world,” said Cristobal Alonso, Mobofree’s CEO and co-founder, via email. “In fact even (as) online marketplaces and e-commerce shops have grown dramatically in developed countries, second hands goods transactions are growing as marketplaces allow much easier way to find, value and perform transactions. I see the same happening in Nigeria and Africa. We will see huge growth in both new items and second hand goods through online platforms for years to come, and even with higher growth rates.”
Mobofree foresees growth in Uganda, despite the economy being smaller than Nigeria’s and Internet penetration just a third of Africa’s largest economy, PCWorld reports.