E commerce one of the big stories of the last ten years, and new research this week suggesting a market worth around nine hundred billion rand is lying untapped in our townships. It could be tapped by e commerce, essentially suggesting that a little bit of focused investment would unlock this economy. Machetta Rakaba is a senior researcher for political economy at the Mapuankubwa Institute for Strategic Reflection. They did this survey or this report rather, it was compiled for
the e Commerce Forum South Africa. Majetta, good evening. You suggest our e commerce market's actually grown a lot more quickly than some other markets. I mean it has been dramatic change quite.
Quickly here, listeners. Yeah, of course, I mean post COVID nineteen what you've seen the e commerce growth in the
country have been more than double tchep. But what actually suggesting there is that given the level of maturity the e commerce majority system that Salfrey guy has managed to build ahead of the countries like you Brazils and Indias of this world, which are quite bigger economists than ours, we think that we're actually losing on the dividends or that comes with that ecosystem that we have already managed
to better. So that's what they actually they reflect is sugistic here that we could set into some of those opportunities in the in the in the townships, but also making sure that in some of the ecummos spends that South African are taking outside of the country into the so that we'll bring it back into their culture and in that way we'll be able to grow the current ten percent e commence retail things to total sils to maybe about twenty so that it's more empowered them with
the rest of the world.
What do we change, I mean, how does the industry change to sort of you know, tap that.
So we we we're looking at a number of interventions which could be either regulated or policy interventions. So at first we think that there's quite a number of you there's a lot of regulator fragmentations and that kind of holding back the growth that they equal the EQUMMACE system can go. And we think by coordinating and harnessing those regulations, that's one area where we think we think growth will come.
We also think we also need some kind of coordination at the level of the authorities, especially because the regulations that are governing ecummas are quite extensive and they're not sitting within one custodiam, so you need almost like somebody or an authority which can coordinate those regulations and so that whatever change is required to be made can be
made as thick as possible. And we're also suggesting that there could be some send send boxes what we call regulator send boxes, so these are this is a system that enables the e commerce players to experiment with new forms of businesses, new models of businesses still a certainly and combined by the strict regulations so that they can still do businesses without a fatly comply with the regulation for the operating within the defend boxes and as and when we find the right ways to change and we
can change the regulation. Lastly, it's just to focus on some of the legislations like your like your Electronics Act and Communications Act, the way we think that the issues around for vereinity data for a varielity that we can change. Lastly is just about how we protect some of the South African ECONMOCE players against some of the global dominant.
So I mean we we all know the dominant players and Amazon dot dot today has been live for a little while now, but we also have a dominant South African player. I mean, do we need to sort of open up the open up the South African space a little bit?
Yeah, and and greatly. That's what they'll put emphasized is that we were not leveraging on the critical significant ecmments as to to create to create market access, especially for the for the small players. And the small players can range from those ecummance players themselves, but also they're small businesses in the in the in the in the in
the rural areas and the township. So what we're saying is that we've got some of these dominant players, which for the benefit of the country, they've already built this ecosystem, but enabled us to then bring on board some of the small businesses in the township, in the rural areas because they've already built the ecosystem that will facilitate transportation last multi divided, So leverage on that, but any same time, making sure that you make spaces for some of the smaller economs.
Do you think anyone in government is listening and there's so much talk about regulation at the moment. I'm sorry to say this, but I'm not convinced that the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is really listening. I mean it's not just the field you're talking about, it seems to be everywhere.
Well, I think, well to be fair government as seems to a certain extent, it's listening. They are listening because if you think two or three years ago, the Computing Commission launched that online Market Inquiry on Commerce which they have made quite a number of recommendations and some of them are be there to be implemented and some of them will orderdy see them. For example, if you go online to sexual product, you'll see a South African flag
if it's from very South African. That is also one of the recommendations coming out of that market inquired by the Commission Commission. We're hoping that through this study it will influence some of the thinking within within the government. And during the launch there was some of the government representatives who were there and they made some commitment that there's some will be able to fall up with some of the recommendations.
Majeta, thank you. Macheta Rakabe is a senior researcher for political economy at the Mapuan Kobe Institute for Strategic reflect,