 We have recently published a new study, a new report on the opportunity for e-commerce in Africa and for this study We have interviewed a thousand five hundred MSMEs across six markets in Africa So it's a very extensive study that really looks at the challenges as well as the opportunities to scale up e-commerce solutions in the region So this study very well portrays some of these challenges So first and foremost one of the main issue that comes up is access to finance So MSMEs really mention in open-ended questions the need to get more and better as well, financial instruments e-commerce can be a solution particularly when it comes to e-commerce platforms that can provide end-to-end solutions to MSMEs So this is really the value of Amazon-like type of solutions which onboard MSMEs and provide end-to-end not only access to markets but also access to delivery services and payments There is also an opportunity for the postal network to contribute to the delivery challenge in particular and in particular to reach out customers and users and MSMEs in rural areas Then the other challenge that we are seeing emerging is certainly the quality of mobile infrastructure and in particular the quality of the mobile internet So mobile internet is widely available for MSMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa but at GSMA we talk about the usage gap So there are about 600 plus million population who are covered by the mobile broadband network in Sub-Saharan Africa but are not using it So there is really an opportunity to leverage e-commerce solutions as a relevant service that obviously provides access to markets to MSMEs to really drive that usage because customers and MSMEs need relevant services so certainly access to market linkages is a relevant solution And then of course other challenges that we are seeing are the availability of affordable phones particularly smartphones and also the cost of mobile data This is something that the industry and the government need to work on to really drive those prices down Sometimes taxation is an issue for affordable devices, affordable data services and this really can hinder e-commerce adoption by MSMEs Another point that is really important to mention is that if we look at e-commerce in Africa it is mostly experienced by a social media platform So social commerce is dominant 60% of all MSMEs we surveyed across the six African countries that we surveyed for this study experienced or used e-commerce solely purely on social media and this is very actually informal It's an informal use of social media platforms whereby an MSME, a micro-entrepreneur for example, my updates on a daily basis, their WhatsApp page with information about the product that they are selling and then informally sells the product through the platform and delivers the product or the product that gets picked up at the seller's location So it's an entirely informal process Also most of the time cash is used for payments So this is really what we are looking at in terms of e-commerce adoption in Africa The use of social commerce is predominant We are seeing more and more MSMEs now also using e-commerce platforms that can provide more of an end-to-end value proposition but then of course there is a cost associated to e-commerce platforms So supporting more affordable mobile data services enabling access to more affordable phones can also support the adoption of e-commerce solutions by MSMEs