34% of people in Zimbabwe are not interested in e-commerce

It looks like a good number of people in Zimbabwe don’t care for e-commerce and online services according to Zimstat. In the recently released findings from the 2020 ICT Access by Households and Use by Individuals Survey, 34% of Zimbabweans answered “not interested” to the question about barriers to purchasing goods and services online.

Although, it’s worth mentioning that Zimstat’s age range for the survey included those three years old and above. So it’s fair to assume that a lot of very confused children just shook their heads when they were asked the questions.

That aside the other responses were far more telling with:

• 46% saying they preferred to shop in person
• 33.3% said they lacked the skills, knowledge and confidence
• 6.2% reposonded by saying they have trust concerns
• 6.0 had security concerns
• 3.4% stated technical concerns
• 2.0% had privacy concerns

It looks like there is still some way for Zimbabwean e-commerce and the adoption of online shopping in general. For an overwhelming majority to say they prefer going to the shop themselves (during the height pandemic) means that e-commerce startups are either not visible enough or there’s still not enough trust with local players to deliver.

This is disheartening because the world has been forced to accelerate e-commerce and we have been excited by the number of Zimbabwean startups that have ventured into the space.

So, if I am to throw in my unsolicited two cents, it looks like Zimbabwe’s growing e-commerce scene has some serious marketing to do to assuage the fears and doubt that locals have.

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