Lessons from Alibaba and Amazon, creating markets and a digital economy in Africa by 2025
Alibaba is an e-commerce and internet company based in China with 2019 revenues totaling USD 72 billion . Amazon, another company based in the USA and it generated USD 280 billion in the same period. By comparison, the total tax revenue collected by the Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania economies over the last year was a combined USD23.8bn . South Africa, one of the biggest economies in Africa collected USD73.8bn in tax revenues over the last year. These numbers therefore tell us a very interesting story; that to get Africa out of poverty, increase employment opportunities and improve the well-being of citizens, African governments must strategise and invest smartly to create an enabling environment for new and disruptive business models that fully embrace the power of ICT to boost trade both in-country and with other countries in Africa. With a population of about 1.3bn people, and a median age of 19.7 years , Africa needs to imagine and create new and scalable employment avenues for the yo