Livestream shopping coming to Africa

There are times you order an item online but what the vendor sends to you is different from what you ordered. This challenge might soon be over as a new livestream shopping platform comes to Africa.

ShopEX TV operator Response Architects has made an exclusive agreement with Alibaba Cloud to launch a live stream shopping platform, Penda. It will be launched in major African markets like Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.

Penda will provide an end-to-end payment and fulfilment solution for vendors’ live streaming across Africa.

Livestream shopping involves retailers hosting livestream events online to launch products, demonstrate how a product works and interact with customers in real time. Think of it as an auction.

It has grown into a significantly profitable industry in many parts of the world. In China, Alibaba’s Taobao Livestream registered 300 million users in 2021 and generated over $323 billion in gross merchandise value.

In teleshopping, the seller displays a short advertising film demonstrating how the product works on a television channel, along with phone numbers you can call to place an order.

Due to the success of teleshopping service ShopEX in Nigeria, the two collaborators Response Architects and Alibaba Cloud think livestream shopping will be a big hit on the continent.

ShopEX partners with Channels TV, TVC, EbonyLife TV, and SilverbirdTV. In livestream shopping, anyone with a mobile device is a potential customer.

How it works

The livestream shopping platform Penda will enable retailers to create and host their own livestream events to launch products, feature demos, and interact with customers in real time. It will also ensure that people can buy and pay for the goods or service without leaving the livestream or app.

According to the collaborators, Penda will help retailers with store set-up, payment, fulfilment, inventory management, and analytics. It will also give them access to finance to source and ship products from manufacturers and suppliers in China.

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