Online Markets Set to Create 3 Million Jobs in Africa by 2025

Online market places are set to create about 3 million jobs for the youth by the year 2025 as reported by bankers and financial experts.

Africa has been facing employment challenges, but at the same time, the continent is seen to embrace the use of internet technology at a faster rate, especially in conducting business activities.

E-commerce platforms have come in handy and have contributed to the employment of a good number of the youths in Africa with the average employed age being 26 years.

As an estimation, the current number of active internet users in Africa stands at 474 million. By 2025, e-commerce is expected to generate 75 billion US dollars in the continent in the annual sales.

Airbnb, a peer-to-peer accommodation platform has enabled house and property owners to host about 3.1 million guests since 2008 earning a combined 400 million US dollars which have been attributed to the positive impact of health tourism.

Kenya is among the African countries that have been at the forefront of using the online market platforms. It has 4000 homes listed on Airbnb,6000 active uber drivers and about 4000 people getting employed directly by the Jumia online market.

East Africa has close to 10,000 active uber drivers while Bolt has ‘tens of thousands of drivers and motorcyclists in Kenya alone.

The flexibility and security measures held by the ride-hailing apps have enabled more women to sign up as drivers of various taxi service providers.

Despite all these adoptions of the e-commerce activities, there are several challenges facing a large number of the African population, illiteracy and poor infrastructure being major ones.

Also Read:

Opinion: The Irony Behind Online Betting Ban in Kenya By The Government

Facebook Restricts Use of Live Streaming Feature to Curb Online Violence

According to AfDB, a third of the 420 million youths in Africa between ages 15-35 years are either unemployed or underemployed. AfDB points out that only 3.1 million jobs are created despite 10-12 million youths joining the workforce each year.

The World Bank estimates the number of unemployed youths in Africa at 60 percent which is.

Illiteracy has been one of the reasons why most people are not employed or cannot find quality jobs. Illiteracy, in this case, could be in terms of not understanding the internet terms.

Poor infrastructure, on the other hand, has made Information Communications Technology to lag behind in the continent making it impossible for some people to have access to internet services.

In Kenya for example, most rural homes have poor network systems making e-commerce activities to be slow and inefficient, leave alone having access to internet-enabled devices.