Boosting e-Commerce with Mall for Africa

By Nseobong Okon-Ekong

A relatively new entrant into the international e-commerce space, Mall for Africa is the ace e-commerce platform established to break down barriers to international commerce by addressing the needs of foreign exchange and global shipping

Founded by Chris Folayan and Tope Folayan, Mall for Africa, was established as a bridge to the world and a solution to the peculiar challenges experienced by the Nigerian/ African shopper.

The concept of the business is based on the need to provide a seamless, easy, secure and efficient way for Africans to shop directly from international stores.”

It is the first–of-its-kind online mall which would allow Nigerian shoppers buy online without having to bother endlessly about picking up and forwarding purchases.

Currently operational in Nigeria, Kenya, the UK and the US, it has a market expansion vision of providing service across sub-Saharan Africa and including on its list of stores Nigerian businesses, who seek to expand their service provisions across the continent.

Mall for Africa exists to make life easy for individual buyers, business owners and procurement officials. Through its application and on line platform, buyers can shop any store in the UK and the US such as Amazon, E-bay and have their items delivered anywhere in the Country.

They can select the items they want and with four clicks have the items purchased and shipped to them in Africa.”

Customers have access to over 180 stores in various categories such as fashion, electronics, auto parts, and much more

A further advantage to shopping with Mall for Africa is the elimination of needless extra luggage charges. Gone are the days where customers would depend on the good will or convenience of relatives and friends coming into the country to get their purchased items delivered to them; or even having to deal with the challenges relating to purchases getting shipped to the wrong locations from where retrieval becomes an issue. Mall for Africa is a safer, cheaper and easy alternative.

Furthermore Mall for Africa is able to give reduced shipping costs through its bulk purchase orders. The platform is able to deliver purchases way below quoted costs of online stores who have recently begun shipping directly to Nigeria.

Before the advent of Mall for Africa, the situation of shopping online from reputable UK and US stores was highly challenging because of the constant denial of Nigerian payment sources, coupled with the refusal of most stores to ship directly to Nigerian Markets.

One can also shop without a daily access limit, use a regular bank card, return wrongly ordered or non-fitting purchases within the stipulated timelines.

In addition to normal shopping, customers also have access to all the Discounts and special deals such as Seasonal Sales and Special offers

To order items, customers simply need to download the MFA application, create an account at www.mallforafrica.com, purchase their chosen items and select their shipping/payment methods.

Customers have the option of home delivery or receive their goods through pick up points.

MFA currently has pickup locations in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Bayelsa and Warri with plans to expand to other cities soon.