Taking advantage of South Africa’s burgeoning e-commerce space, Proudly South African (Proudly SA) plans to establish two e-commerce platforms.
Initiated in partnership with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), the platforms – Shop Proudly SA and Market Access Platform (MAP) – will go live on 1 July, says Proudly SA.
Shop Proudly SA will cater to the business-to-consumer market segment, while MAP will serve as a business-to-business (B2B) online platform.
According to Proudly SA, MAP will provide corporate buyers who wish to meet their localisation targets with access to a database of over 2 000 enterprises, spanning diverse industries that have been vetted and accredited.
Shop Proudly SA will allow consumers to source and buy only locally-manufactured goods and services at the click of a button, it states.
Proudly South African CEO Eustace Mashimbye explains that the launch of the e-commerce platforms seeks to curb the high failure rate of small and medium businesses in SA and drive the localisation agenda.
Says Mashimbye: “At Proudly South African, we have always sought innovative ways of galvanising public support for local enterprises to enable them to scale up, become globally competitive and create jobs. To that end, we believe e-commerce has immense potential to overcome traditional barriers to trade and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike.
“Through this intervention, we are harnessing technology as a catalyst of ramping up support for home-grown products and for companies whose manufacturing infrastructure and operations create jobs locally. Through these groundbreaking platforms, we seek to make it seamless for consumers and supply chain management practitioners to source from local companies, while also enabling them to meet their procurement goals.”
DTIC minister Parks Tau adds: “These platforms will help boost support for small, medium and micro enterprises and locally-manufactured goods and services, and create much-needed jobs and grow the resilience of our economy.”
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 exponentially accelerated the growth of e-commerce in SA, as strict lockdown regulations shifted consumers towards online purchasing platforms.
Data from Statista shows SA’s e-commerce market generated revenue of $42.4 million (about R763 million) in 2023, with expectations to reach $165.1 million (nearly R3 billion) by 2030.
According to Mashimbye, Shop Proudly SA and MAP will also provide entrepreneurs with the ability to expand their market beyond their geographical confines and negate the capital outlay required for a brick-and-mortar outlet.
“The launch of Shop Proudly SA and MAP is opportune as it piggy-backs on the maturing e-commerce ecosystem, ubiquitous broadband access and consumers’ growing appetite for online transactions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Shop Proudly SA and MAP have a huge potential to provide a lifeline to many fledgling SMEs that have lost a significant share of their respective markets, due to the influx of imports, especially in labour-intensive sectors that have been negatively affected by imports, including in industries growingly serviced by online stores.”
In addition, the platforms will enable consumers and the private sector to identify companies that have local manufacturing capabilities across different industries.
“By housing all these companies under one roof for consumer shopping and procurement purposes, we provide visibility to these companies, convenience to shoppers and seamless access to home-grown companies for procurement practitioners who seek to meet their localisation objectives,” states Mashimbye.
He concludes that the plan is to eventually expand the transactional online store into a B2B platform, and add export capability to it, with the support of the DTIC.
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