CNN’s Connecting Africa looks at the initiatives and strategies e-commerce companies are taking to connect African consumers with online products and learns what needs to be done to increase online access, seamlessly deliver purchased goods, and expand product offerings across the continent.

CNN’s Eleni Giokos spoke with tech savvy businesses about accessing the fast-growing youth population in Africa.

Clickatell in South Africa is leveraging messaging platforms to connect businesses with customers.

Pieter de Villiers, one of the co-founders of Clickatell, explains how they utilise this ‘chat commerce’,

“We provide all the toolkits that you need to create the entire customer journey from discovery to ordering a product, to giving a survey, to checking out on that chat platform that you and I already use every single day.”

The company has evolved to provide brands with the technology to engage with their customers through messaging platforms.

He continues on the increasing demand to provide consumers with mobile interactions and transactions, “Today we do more than 1.5 million payments per day. We service more than 60 million active customers for many banks across that market. We’ve $130 million plus business with SMS. We had multiple countries presence in the US, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa.”

The director of communications at Clickatell, Rozz Atanassova, explains the role of AI in promoting the future of e-commerce, “Clickatell is really excited in leveraging AI across the African continent due to the diverse nature of the African continent. So, there are lots of different cultures, lots of different languages, different dialects and AI really provides us the ability to help businesses better communicate with their consumers. So, we are looking at leveraging private AI so that it still feels secure and safe and encrypted to help businesses enable use cases with real time sentiment.”

Atanassova and de Villiers end the interview by explaining the success of chat commerce, “There isn’t a vertical that we currently don’t engage with and that hasn’t found chat is to be an effective way to get to their customers.”

De Villiers furthers this within the context of the continent, “I’m the eternal optimist in terms of Africa’s potential, not just South Africa, but Africa’s potential. I think that with our diaspora and our borderless trade that’s happening, there’s incredible opportunities. So, with these technologies that break down barriers, that break down borders, and they really bring an equal playing ground for the average man and woman on the street to be able to find the best services and the best quality of care they deserve.”

This interview was featured in a recent episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.

In Lagos, Giokos meets Lawrence Nazare, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of Continental Reinsurance.  

He explains what the reinsurance industry does, “Reinsurance in a nutshell, is really insurance, for insurance companies.  

It is really the second level of insurance after the insurance company insures its direct client. The reinsurer takes whatever risk the insurance company cannot cover under its own balance sheet.”  

Intra-African trade has many challenges and Nazare believes that the size of the continent is one of the biggest hurdles, “Africa is a huge continent. So just the distances, I think makes it a daunting task. Traveling in Africa, when I started traveling was not easy, connectivity in Africa is not easy. So making sure that you are there on the ground, and interacting with your teams can be difficult. It’s proving to be a lot easier now post COVID doing it digitally, but at one point, we had to be physically traveling.” 

Nazare also says that fragmented regulatory framework across the continent has proved to be a barrier to trade.  

The GMD of Continental Reinsurance hopes that the African Continental Free Trade Area will solve this problem, “I see the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as an absolute imperative. I think for our business, it’s very exciting because of the promises that you’re seeing. One of which primarily is a promise of a level playing field, a modernised regulatory framework, no barriers to trade, free movement, free movement of labour, absolutely important.” 

Nazare is hopeful for the future of business and trade across Africa, “I think the script for Africa’s future success story must be written by great African businesses. Those great African businesses must be allowed to spread their wings, take advantages of opportunities across the continent. We are on a fairly steep growth trajectory in Africa, boundless opportunities, but I believe we must create an environment that allows those enterprises to grow and thrive.” 

This month’s programme also visits Ghana for a meeting of the Africa Economic Zones Organization, in Egypt energy and infrastructure giant Elsewedy Electric talk about their plans for a better-connected continent, and in South Africa Giokos explores South Africa’s wine industry. 

‘Connecting Africa’ featuring the GMD of Continental Reinsurance aired on Saturday 5th February at 0800 SAST on CNN International 

The show also airs at the following times: 

Monday 7th February at 0030 SAST and 2245 SAST 

Tuesday 8th February at 2245 SAST 

Saturday 12th February at 0830 SAST and 1300 SAST 

Sunday 13th February at 2000 SAST 

Monday 14th February at 0300 SAST