Consumers in Africa are going digital. It’s being driven by a myriad of factors—urbanisation, internet penetration, rising incomes, low-cost smartphones and tablets, access to banking services, and perhaps most importantly, a boom of young, tech-savvy Africans.

Most of Africa is young with 420 million people aged 15-35 and expected to double by 2050. As Africa’s youthful population (36 out of the world’s 40 youngest countries are in Africa) keeps connecting, it’s forecast to surpass half a billion e-commerce users by 2025, predominantly with a mobile-first approach to shopping. In fact, Africa leads mobile internet usage a full 13% above the global average, and almost 5% more mobile usage than Asian region markets as of 2021. According to McKinsey, by 2025, e-commerce could account for 10% of retail sales in the continent’s largest economies, which will translate into some $75 billion in annual revenue.

Hello Omnichannel

As African consumers continue to embrace digital e-commerce and mobile—omnichannel—shopping, retailers will need to change. In the not-too-distant future, the days of manual processes will need to be gone if retailers want to win with consumers—and win in retail.

Experience in retail is everything, everywhere, every time. And increasingly, the experiences for African consumers will be omnichannel, across retail segments: revenues for online sales of grocery and personal care products continues to grow and is forecast to continue steady growth through 2025. Fashion and electronics products create the highest sales revenues among online shoppers in African markets, with fashion products predicted to reach $13.4 billion USD in sales and electronics predicted to reach 11.2 billion USD in annual sales by 2025.

The question is, how will retailers be equipped to meet these new digital expectations, capturing the expanding revenue opportunities omnichannel brings?  

 RFID Technology Delivers on Digital Demand

As omnichannel shopping continues to grow as projected in Africa, retailers will face new opportunities and challenges. Increased demand from multiple channels brings the opportunity to sell more by delivering the experience customers expect, to purchase the items that they want, when and how they want. The challenge is simply delivering on customer’s digital shopping expectations. Except, it’s not that simple—not when omnichannel enters the equation.

Retailers must shift their focus to inventory accuracy if they’re going to fulfill the growing digital demand from African consumers. Meaning, they must know that every item is in the right place at the right time. All. The. Time.

Enter radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. It enables digital data to be encoded in RFID tags or smart labels and it “reads” them rapidly, automatically tracking and tracing items as they move throughout a store or warehouse, and out the door to customers. Retailers have depended on RFID for counting stock but are now turning to it more to create smart stores with the inventory accuracy needed to meet the challenges omnichannel brings.

RFID helps retailers easily manage inventory accuracy in real time. It will be vital for retailers to implement as digital shopping trends grow across Africa. Workers need to be able to quickly locate the items shoppers want. Online and mobile orders need to be filled quickly and accurately so items are ready to fulfill whether shipped or when shoppers arrive. And perhaps most importantly, out of stocks and overstocks need to be eliminated to prevent missed sales. According to the 14^th annual Zebra Global Shopper Study, seven-in-10 shoppers leave stores without all the items they intended to buy, and about half (49%) say it was due to out-of-stocks.

South-African retail group TFG, which operates 28 brands in over 4000 stores across 32 countries, recognises the value of RFID, putting it at the centre of its seven-year Digital Transformation Programme, "From an omnichannel strategy, stock accuracy is absolutely critical. We want to be able to fulfill orders across any channels and across any inventory point. The only way we were going to be able to deliver on that promise was with inventory accuracy. RFID is a huge step in that direction for us. We like to invest wisely with our partners and with our solutions," said Greg Walsh, head of omnichannel systems at TFG.

As African retailers look for the right investment and modernisation decisions today to leverage now and, in the future, RFID should be centre stage. It gives retailers reliable, accurate inventory that they can literally count on—to know exactly where their stock is, enabling seamless customer fulfillment, however they shop. RFID is like a hidden smart engine that can give retailers in Africa the ability to keep up with the digital demand growing with young consumers, ensuring their orders are right at the right time—now.

To learn more about RFID Retail solutions, click here and here.

www.zebra.com