A new e-commerce platform launched to connect SMEs with the West-African market.
A new E-commerce trading platform has been launched with a focus on encouraging intra-Africa trade and connecting Africa’s Small and Medium Enterprises.
Ancestral House Eastern Africa online trading platform, which has headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, aims to give traders access to East and West African markets.
Ose Imoukhuede, Chairman of Ancestral House Eastern Africa stated that the company’s primary goal is to improve connections in Africa by supporting domestic export and import.
“The biggest challenge most SMEs in the continent face is that they cannot easily export goods within the continent, but they can easily export and import goods from other continents despite the Intra Africa trade potential being over USD 1 billion annually,” Chairman of Ancestral House Eastern Africa, Ose Imoukhuede.
Noted that this e-commerce platform will be the one-stop solution for traders to access market research, logistics, consumer trends, and habits and benefit from business matching.
“There are a number of challenges facing the SMEs sector in the continent ranging from lack of market information, inexperienced exporters/importers, poor logistics infrastructure, inefficient cross-border payment systems/infrastructure, cultural differences, gaps, trust deficit, and varied Competitive landscape. We want to be the one-stop solution for all these problems and enable them scale up their businesses,”
According to partner Shreyas Patel, the idea of developing a trade house structure recognizes the dislocations in Africa, which are mostly caused by a lack of market intelligence, cultural indifferences, and other trade hurdles.
The announcement follows the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which spans 1.2 billion people and USD2.5 trillion in GDP across all 55 African Union member nations.
SMEs make up about 80% of the region’s enterprises, and they frequently struggle to break into more mature international markets. With AfCFTA in place, SMEs are well-positioned to access regional export destinations and can use regional markets as stepping stones to develop into international markets at a later date.