Digital trade

In a second presentation to the African Union eCommerce Conference held between the 23rd and 25th of November, RIS focused on the role of trust and digital trade. Trust is the engine for digital growth. Digital trade, the digital economy and the fourth industrial revolution are all based on technologies that require trust on both sides of a transaction, be it business to consumer, business to business, government to citizen or government to business. This means new or updated policies, laws and regulations for most African countries. The ideal outcome is where consumers and firms have a common understanding of their rights […]

As part of the African Union eCommerce Conference held between the 23rd and 25th of November, RIS presented the findings of its report on Digital Trade and the Digital Economy in Africa. Africa’s trade in digitally-delivered services is tiny, at below 1% of total trade. Online services provided by governments to citizens are also at low levels. This is not surprising, given the weak performance in the enabling platforms of IDs, payments and connectivity. But, these poor rankings show that there is great scope for improvement, and relatively small changes can have big results. Africa’s opportunity lies in combining the benefits […]