Nairobi has improved one position to 88 in this year’s E-commerce index, a measure the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) uses to gauge the environment countries are providing to support online transactions.
Kenya’s global ranking in supporting deals conducted over the internet has edged up marginally largely on improved security of servers which reduces the risk of attacks and faster postal delivery, a new UN report says.
Nairobi has improved one position to 88 in this year’s E-commerce index, a measure the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) uses to gauge the environment countries are providing to support online transactions.
The UN places Kenya fifth in Africa, an improvement from last year’s seventh after leapfrogging Morocco and Ghana. Mauritius remains the top-ranked country in Africa despite slipping three positions to 58 globally, followed by Tunisia (70), South Africa (76) and Nigeria (79).
“To facilitate more inclusive e-commerce, African countries would benefit from catching up in all policy areas,” UNCTAD says in the report. “In the case of internet access, only a quarter of the population in Africa uses the internet compared to three quarters in western Asia.”
The country’s overall score in the 2019 UNCTAD B2C (business to consumer) e-commerce index, improved 2.9 to 49 compared to last year’s measure, although this still represents a slower pace of year-on-year growth relative to key countries globally.
The closer the score is to 100, the better the environment and a pointer to a digitalising economy. The country’s rank in 2019 e-commerce index is, however, still well behind the 82nd position recorded two years ago.
Kenya’s score on secure internet servers, which act a proxy for e-commerce shops such as Jumia and Safaricom’s Masoko, has risen to 49 from 37 last year.
The score on secure server penetration is among three other indicators the UN uses to measure how conducive the environment is to support adoption of e-commerce deals such as online shopping.
Nairobi’s score on reliable postal delivery for goods bought online shot up to 47 in this year’s score, recovering from 2018’s slide to 27 from 37 previously.
Marks on penetration remained unchanged at 82, pointing elevated access to mobile money such M-Pesa where Kenya is a global leader.
However, the score on share of individuals using internet to cut commercial deals has surprisingly tumbled sharply to 18 from 39 last year and 27 in 2017.
Netherlands remained the highest ranked country in e-commerce with a score of 96.4 followed by Switzerland with a score of 95.5.
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