The rise of the internet age has revolutionized many spheres of business, including how marketing is done. While traditional marketing channels are still important to many businesses, it is digital marketing spend that has been growing over the last decade.

One of the areas of marketing that has risen from obscurity to the top of any marketing strategy in just the last decade has been influencer marketing. Many businesses of all sizes are now engaging online influencers to push their product and brand awareness among target audiences. A 2019 Social Publi study found that 93% of marketers have used Influencer Marketing and over half of those regularly allocate at least ten percent of their budget to the channel. As a result, influencer marketing has now become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Influencer marketing in itself is not new. It has, however, completely changed from the idea of traditional endorsements by celebrities and sports stars into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign driven primarily by online influencers who build their brand primarily through social networks. An online influencer is an individual who has established credibility in a specific area, such as fashion or travel, and created an audience who they can persuade by virtue of their authenticity. In many cases, influencers profit through promoting products to their audiences through various online channels.

Influencers in Kenya and Nigeria

To understand the impact of influencers on consumers and their role within a full marketing strategy, GeoPoll conducted a dipstick survey through our mobile application in two of Africa’s most active countries online, Kenya and Nigeria. The study was conducted with over 2,000 respondents in the last week of July 2020.

Here are some of the key findings from the survey:

• Facebook is the most preferred social network and is the channel where most followers keep up with their favorite influencers in Kenya and Nigeria, followed by Instagram.
• Lifestyle, fashion, and technology influencers are the most popular categories of influencers followed.
• Product reviews and live videos are the most engaging types of content by influencers.
• More consumers trust influencers than they trust brand messages; 53% say they trust influencers over brands themselves.
• Journalists and industry experts are the most trusted types of influencers.
• A large majority (80%) of the consumers in Kenya and Nigeria say they have bought products following influencer recommendations.

Full analysis and more detailed breakdown of results, including a list of the top 15 mentioned influencers in Kenya and Nigeria, are available in this free report.

To conduct your own study with GeoPoll’s global panel of respondents and multi-modal research platform, which enables research through SMS, CATI voice calls, mobile application, and mobile web, please contact us today.

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The economic impact of COVID-19 is being felt globally, but economies classified as ‘emerging’ and ‘developing’ by the World Bank, which includes those in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are likely to be hardest hit. The combination of largely informal workforces, a decrease in export demand, and existing economic instability is expected to result in an outsize impact in countries such as South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, it has been predicted that coronavirus will result in the first recession in that region for 25 years. Most countries in the region have not yet experienced their peak in COVID-19 cases, and it’s possible that coronavirus-related measures and the related economic impacts will continue for some time.

Coronavirus’ Effect on the Economy, Employment and Income in sub-Saharan Africa

Despite these predictions, we don’t know yet how the economic impact of COVID-19 varies based on country, job type, income level, and other factors. In order to provide a more complete picture of the economic impact of COVID-19, GeoPoll has conducted a study in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Mozambique, and South Africa. The main areas of GeoPoll’s study are:

• Ability to work and income change since the outset of COVID-19
• Concern over expenses and the ability to pay for basic needs
• Usage of loans, savings, and income to pay for expenses
• The impact of COVID-19 on loans and mobile money services
• Receipt of aid and opinions of government priorities

The study was conducted by SMS from June – July 2020, with 500 respondents per country or 2,500 total, and a nationally representative sample by age, gender, and location. To download the full PDF report, a 16-page report including breakdowns and analysis by country, job type, income level, and more, please click below. You can also view the results in our interactive dashboard.

Data: COVID-19’s Economic Impact

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The post Report: Economic Impact of COVID-19 Across sub-Saharan Africa appeared first on GeoPoll.

This predicament is what brought organizations like Direct Pay Online, an online payment processor, into existence, yet many Africans still pay cash upon delivery for their online purchases due to worry about being scammed by the online retailer. Despite the solutions that have been developed to aid in paying for online purchases, e-commerce has not yet reached a prime across sub-Saharan Africa. In order to gauge participation in online shopping, questions were included in our recent study on financial services on the topic. In this report, we will share our findings.

Methodology

GeoPoll’s research experts distributed the questionnaire to respondents in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Ghana. Surveys were conducted incrementally by region between July and September of 2019 via mobile web; thus, the data focuses on populations who have access to a mobile phone and basic internet services.

Survey samples had a total of 400 respondents per country—aside from Côte d’Ivoire, which had a sample of 250 respondents because of the mode of the survey and the Internet penetration in the country. The gender distribution in each country was 50% female and 50% male. Due to the survey topic, it was targeted to the youth population, with the majority of respondents coming from the 25-35 age group.

E-commerce Popularity in Africa

Survey respondents across the six countries studied were asked about the last time they made an online purchase of a product and the results largely varied by country.

Out of all six countries studied, Nigeria had the most reported online shoppers. 58% of Nigerian respondents indicated making an online purchase in the past month, while only 14% of respondents reported making an online purchase within the past 2-6 months. This data indicates that Nigerians are shopping online frequently rather than intermittently.

In contrast to Nigeria, Uganda had the lowest number of reported online shoppers. 57% of Ugandan respondents indicated that they had never made an online purchase before, which is almost exactly the opposite of Nigeria’s 58% of respondents that had made an online purchase within the past month.

In the next two sub-sections, we will take a look at what items were purchased online and through what platforms they were purchased in order to further explore the e-commerce markets in the countries studied.

Items Purchased Online

Those who had reported making online shopping purchases in the past were then asked to indicate the items they have purchased online through a select-all-that-apply style question. Overall, the most popular items purchased online were electronics and clothing items; however, each country had a unique distribution among purchase categories.

Kenyan respondents, for example, purchased more electronics than any other country studied by about 15%. In the electronics category, Kenya (64%) was followed by Ivory Coast (61%), and Ghana (46%).

Nigerian respondents, the group with the highest reported rates of online shopping, had the most diverse profile of purchases across categories. Nigerians indicated purchasing more alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages, home décor, hygiene, and automotive parts than any other country. This diversity in product purchases, coupled with the reported frequency of online purchases in Nigeria, can lead one to believe that the country has built a stronger culture around online shopping than the other countries studied.

Platforms used for e-commerce

The respondents who had indicated shopping online were also asked about the platforms they used to make their online purchases. The resulting data indicates that consumers are using large online retailers and social media sites to make purchases more than smaller independent online retailers.

Jumia was the number one most used online shopping platform in every country except Tanzania, while Facebook and Instagram secured 6 spots in the top 3 most used online shopping platforms. The apparent preference for large online retailers—like Jumia, Facebook, and Instagram—may be due to the issues seen in product delivery in the region. However, as infrastructure for package delivery continues to grow, online shopping will likely increase in popularity dramatically.

E-commerce in Africa: Takeaways

Although e-commerce is still not the most popular shopping method in sub-Saharan Africa, GeoPoll’s youth study on online shopping engagement revealed that there is a portion of consumers making online purchases in all of the countries studied. Electronics and clothing items are leading the movement in e-commerce so far, yet results from Nigeria hint that expansion across product categories could on the horizon for other sub-Saharan countries. Now, only time and further research will tell how the landscape of e-commerce will change in the coming years for SSA.

To stay on top of the changes as they happen, GeoPoll can facilitate a study like this one for your organization. Contact us to learn more today.

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Nigeria is a country that is facing a unique struggle with financial inclusion, which is one of the main reasons that the topic has been—and still is—so widely discussed. Despite efforts to increase financial inclusion, Nigeria hasn’t experienced much of an improvement in financial inclusion since 2012. Between then and now, only 2.9% of Nigerians that were previously financially excluded have gained access to the financial services they need.

Although there are many complex factors that have stunted the efforts for increasing financial inclusion in Nigeria, there are key challenges to consider when first learning about what is occurring in Nigeria’s financial sector right now. In this post, we will discuss some of these challenges.

Lack of Required Documentation

Opening any sort of financial account requires legal identification, something that many Nigerians are lacking. A study from InterMedia and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reports that only 79 percent of Nigerian adults possess the documents needed to register for mobile money or a bank account, making the lack of required documentation arguably one of the biggest challenges facing financial inclusion in Nigeria.

Low Levels of Financial Literacy

Nigerians who have access to financial services are reported as having a lack of basic resources and the financial knowledge necessary to carry out transactions: Only 16% of Nigerian adults report having the financial literacy it takes to carry out commonplace financial tasks such as registering for an account, and the lack of education around financial services has likely contributed to low financial inclusion.

Lack of Close-Proximity Service Points

One of the biggest challenges facing financial inclusion in Nigeria is that more than half of Nigerian adults don’t have close proximity access to financial services such as ATMs, banks, or service kiosks. In fact, most Nigerians were reported as not knowing of any within a single bus ride of their home. This has been the case for Nigeria for years, as the rate of access to formal financial services remained constant in 2016 at 42%. Even mobile money has been slow to be integrated into Nigeria. Despite mobile money awareness seeing an increase from 12 percent in 2015 to 20 percent in 2016, a majority of Nigerian adults report still not knowing of a mobile money service point within close proximity. This makes limited access to service points a key hindrance to financial inclusion.

Decrease in Bank Account Ownership

One rather puzzling challenge facing financial inclusion in Nigeria is the drop in bank account ownership that occurred in 2016. Experts believe this drop is attributed to a few factors:

• The government requiring bank account holders to have biometric bank verification numbers (BVNs), which caused difficulties and non-compliance.
• Transaction cost increase.
• The 2016 Nigerian recession that caused an 18.5% inflation.

High Service Fees

Nigerian adults prefer to use cash, and most of the population works in the informal sector. Naturally, this has made the use of financial services rather stagnant. One of the biggest reasons why cash is still the go-to payment method is because most non-users of formal financial services reported not being able to cover the service fees associated with transactions. Additionally, the regulatory changes that allow Nigerians to transfer cash more freely definitely helped. Prior to 2017, regulations stated that Nigerians couldn’t transfer amounts over $10 without first submitting paperwork.

Opposition from Banks

Not only is the opposition from banks an obstacle in Nigeria’s financial inclusion, it’s also the reason most Nigerians prefer to pay in cash. Experts believe that Nigeria’s cash dependency and the reason for its slow adoption of formal financial services is that financial institutions and providers fear technology start-ups will move into the market, causing industry leaders to have to make room for better formal financial service offerings.

Moving Forward

Fortunately, there are efforts underway to bring more financial inclusion to Nigeria. The federal government of Nigeria is working toward a goal set back in 2012 that targets financial inclusion for 80% of its population by the year 2020. In January of 2019, The Central Bank of Nigeria publicly spoke optimistically about reaching the 2020 goal—at a time when recent studies had shown about 36% of Nigerian adults were still lacking access to sufficient financial services.

As 2020 nears, only time will tell if Nigeria will achieve its goal of 80% financial inclusion by 2020. In the meantime, GeoPoll’s Financial Services Report will be available for free download in late October. The 30-page report presents findings from a research study conducted on use and access to financial services in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire. Topics covered in the report include income, spending, payment types, savings culture, and investment activity, which all lend context to financial inclusion in Nigeria.

To receive the report directly to your inbox as soon as it is published, fill out the form below:

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Nigeria Vs Argentina: Viewership by TV audience share

Over 12% of all TV viewers from 12 of the 36 states in Nigeria tuned in with a palpable hope for their homegrown heroes. The Super Eagles were once again confronting their all-time rivals Argentina. For the Nigeria viewers, Super Sport was the channel of choice. The DSTV channel had the largest share of TV viewers at 6.6% followed by Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) at 5.7%.

In Kenya, over 40% of all TV viewing audiences were glued to this match with NTV and Kwese having the highest channel share at 18% and 15% respectively.

In Uganda, 22% of all TV audiences tuned in with UBC having the highest TV ratings among other World Cup channels at 8%. Rwanda’s viewership of the match was at 55% with Rwanda TV taking Lion’s share. Finally, in Tanzania, 23% switched from watching other channels with a majority preferring TBC1 at 16% channel share to watch that final match for Nigeria.

Most Watched Nigeria Game in the World Cup

An average of 35% of all TV viewers watching this match in which Nigeria beat Iceland 2:0.  That match was also the most watched by Nigerians in 12 out of the 36 states in which GeoPoll’s audience measurement service runs. In Nigeria, over 40% of all TV viewing audiences watched the match with Supersport having the highest share of channel at 35%

Senegal & Tunisia: Africa’s Chances

With the elimination of Nigeria, Morocco, and Egypt at the group stage, the only remaining African teams that will be playing later today (29^th June) are Senegal and Tunisia.

In this last day of the group matches, Senegal has emerged as the continents underdogs. Tonight they will be facing Colombia as Tunisia meet Panama in the last group matches.

GeoPoll has been and continues to collect media audience measurement data throughout the World Cup in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda.  Contact us now to get these deeper insights into the World Cup viewership in Africa or to sign up for our exclusive World Cup offer!

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In addition, as more countries make a concerted effort to move towards fuel sources at the top of the energy ladder, which is cleaner and more efficient, it is important for governments and energy companies alike to understand the driving factors behind fuel purchase and consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the most extensive studies conducted on household fuel and energy use in developing countries was conducted in May 2003 by the World Bank. 15 years later, GeoPoll has conducted a new study on this topic to examine current trends in fuel usage and observe the variations in fuel use between three countries in Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

GeoPoll Report on Cooking Fuel Consumption in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

Our findings show that there has been a significant uptake of modern fuels such as LPG, charcoal and paraffin in urban areas, whereas firewood remains the most commonly used fuel in rural areas. We also found significant variations in fuel usage by country, with each country having a different most commonly used fuel.

Download the full report for data on:

• Most commonly used cooking fuels in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda
• Which countries and areas have seen an uptake in usage of more modern fuels such as LPG
• How urban and rural households differ in their fuel usage
• Frequency of fuel purchase and how often households switch fuel type
• Average fuel costs for each country and percentage of monthly income that is spent on fuel
• Most preferred LPG brands in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

The data for this study was collected through GeoPoll’s mobile research and engagement platform, which facilitates data collection and communications with communities around the world. The survey was conducted via SMS to 1,302 members of GeoPoll’s panel in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, and data collection was completed within three days in January 2018.

Download the full report on Household Fuel Consumption in Africa here, or to run your own survey using GeoPoll’s platform and panelists throughout emerging markets, please contact us today.

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