While internet penetration is fastly growing
and driving online activities among the people in Nigeria, the road
infrastructure needed to get items delivered at sub-hub locations are not
growing at commensurate proportion. Though ecommerce brands like the market
leader, Jumia deploy initiatives like Jforce, remote pickup stations and
delivery hubs to take the services closer to the people, there are still
mitigating factors such as extremely bad roads that make it impossible for
delivery agents to access certain locations.
Irene Emede runs Fitfeett Collections
Logistics in Benin. She is excited that residents, despite availability of
local markets, are making use of online services for groceries and other daily
needs. “The interesting thing that really amazes me is despite the local
markets we have around here, we still have customers ordering groceries like
Rice, Groundnut oil and Spaghetti. And you still see them going there to order
for their clothes,” she stated.
Irene however lamented the negative impact the
state of roads in the area is having on delivery of items to customers. “One of
the major challenges we have is our bad road. For instance, the road that leads
to Ugbiyoko to Ekenwa down to Barrack
road is very bad and is not really helping us. Our delivery associates
are not able to take their vehicles down there and for that reason, they go
there for delivery by foot which is very stressful.
“So most of the items we deliver there are the
little items that are easy to carry because they can’t carry large items on
their heads simply because they want to make delivery and the bus drivers make
things worse by charging them.”
Another negative side to this is the danger it
poses to delivery agents, and safety of goods, considering the current state of
insecurity across the country. (Name) explained that the company takes
precaution by ensuring that items going to such locations are small and not
high earned. “Most of the items taken to that axis for delivery are not
high-value items and they are very small. This is for them to be able to
overcome the insecurity over there in case of any that may come up.”
Interestingly, the deplorable state of roads
has also created a market for electric car jack in the area, selling among
female car owners. “We have this electric carjack that most of the females use
simply because they don’t really have the strength to jack their car whenever their
car breaks down on their way out,” she explained.
As e-commerce brands put in efforts to drive
market penetration in Nigeria, a lot more will be achieved if relevant
authorities can help with road infrastructure. E-commerce and logistics are
inseparable and both occupy crucial space in the growth of the digital economy,
which is one of the major economic goals of Nigeria
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