Proudly South African, in partnership with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic), unveiled ground-breaking and pioneering e-commerce solutions that will bolster public and commercial support for locally manufactured goods and services in line with the drive to ramp up localisation of the economy.
These e-commerce solutions comprise of a business-to-consumer online store aptly named Shop Proudly SA, and a business-to-business (B2B) online platform which will be known as the Market Access Platform (MAP). 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 by Proudly South African.
Shop Proudly SA will enable conscientious consumers to seamlessly and securely source and buy only locally manufactured goods and services under one roof at the click of a button.
Eustace Mashimbye, Chief Executive of Proudly South African, explains that the launch of Shop Proudly SA and MAP gives expression to government and his organisation’s quest to rally public support for local industries and businesses by leveraging the power of technology and connectivity to bolster the localisation agenda. The launch of these initiatives also seeks to mitigate against the high failure rate of small and medium sized businesses in South Africa, which has at times been attributed to access to market challenges and has been exacerbated by an increasing challenging economic environment, an influx of cheap imports, and consumer’s rapidly declining disposable income.
“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 that 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 for ramping up support for homegrown products and for companies whose manufacturing infrastructure and operations create jobs locally. Through these ground-breaking 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,” says Mashimbye.
Parks Tau, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) concurred: “These platforms will help boost support for Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) and locally manufactured goods and services and create much-needed jobs and grow the resilience of our economy”.
Immense potential to support local industries and turbo boost economic growth
Mashimbye says the added benefits of Shop Proudly SA and MAP is that it provides entrepreneurs with the ability to expand their market beyond their geographical confines and negate the capital outlay required for a brick-and-mortar outlet. In turn, it enables them to expand their businesses and create employment opportunities across the e-commerce value chain for millions of young people who are swelling the ranks of the unemployed.
The launch of Shop Proudly SA and MAP is opportune as it piggy-backs on the maturing e-commerce ecosystem, ubiquitous broadband access, and consumer’s 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 who 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.
These platforms also address the pain points that many consumers and the private sector have alluded to about struggling 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,” says Mashimbye.
The plan to eventually expand the transactional online store into a Business to Business platform, and add export capability to it, with the support of the dtic, which has made this possible by commissioning and funding the development costs of both these platforms, means that the participating enterprises and industrialists will be exposed to a wider base of customers, including those looking to do bulk-buying, as well as those aiming to seamlessly export their products into other countries,
The outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 has accelerated the growth of e-commerce exponentially in South Africa as strict lockdown regulations shifted consumers towards online purchasing platforms. Mashimbye points out that e-commerce is the next frontier of growth in South Africa and his sentiments are confirmed by data from Statista that shows that the e-commerce market in South Africa generated a revenue of $42.4 million (about R763 million) in 2023 and is expected to reach $165.1 million (nearly R3 billion) by 2030.
