Economy
Nigeria Has 150m Mobile Subscriptions, 97.2m Internet Users—Jumia
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A leading e-commerce in Nigeria, Jumia Nigeria, has released a its third African Mobile Trends Paper highlighting how the market has democratized mobile internet use, the consumer behaviours driving increased smartphone adoption and the role of mobile brands, mobile operators and m-commerce in creating a synergy of an enhanced customer experience.
A statement obtained by Business Post, it was disclosed that were 960 million mobile subscriptions across Africa, an 80 percent penetration rate among the continent’s population. Internet penetration is at 18 percent with 216 million internet users.
“While Nigeria’s internet penetration is much higher at 53 percent, its mobile subscription is similar to Africa’s at 81 percent penetration (150 million mobile subscriptions).
“Like last year, it is presumed that the unique subscription rate is lower as each subscriber owns an average of 2 SIM cards,” Jumia said in the report.
In the white paper presentation from Jumia delving into mobile trends across Africa and specifically Nigeria, this year’s Mobile Africa Study was carried out in 15 African countries which generate more than 80 percent of Africa’s GDP – Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Senegal.
“As predicted in 2016, Nigeria continues its trajectory down the increasingly widening highway that is the mobile internet. With a current internet penetration rate of 53 percent (97.2 million users) Nigeria has a much higher penetration rate than across Africa (18 percent).
“About 71 percent of website visitors on Jumia use their mobile phones. This is in comparison to 53 percent of Jumia African customers.
“One of the main vehicles of this mobile trajectory is the increasing adoption of the smartphone device by consumers.
“As predicted in our 2016 report, smartphone adoption continues to rise in Nigeria. The mobile phone category continues to be the most popular among Nigerian shoppers on Jumia, both in terms of the number of items sold, and in terms of revenue generated.
“The sales of smartphones jumped up by 394 percent between 2014 and 2016, mostly driven by an increasing range of smartphones price points,” Jumia stated.
The report further said, “The average price for a smartphone on Jumia is $117, down from $216 in 2014.
“Correlating with this is a drop in the share of sales of basic feature phones from 6 percent in 2015 to 4 percent in 2016, even as the share of smartphones on the website increased.
“In 2016 Chinese mobile brands held dominance and played a major role in introducing smartphones with lower price points.
“Infinix, Innjoo, Tecno, Samsung and Yezz are the top 5 smartphone brands in terms of sales on Jumia.
“Infinix continues to be Africa’s top smartphone brand across Jumia’s 15 markets. One of their entry level smartphones, the Infinix Hot4Lite was one of the best-selling phones across several African markets including Nigeria,” it added.
The increased access and affordability of low specification smartphones has also revealed a need for the mobile ecosystem to respond with data-efficient browsers and mobile apps that are optimized for performance and an easy user experience.
Looking at the mobile internet browsers customers use to access Jumia, 50 percent of customers in Africa come onto Jumia’s mobile site with Google Chrome. In Nigeria that number is just 28 percent. Instead, the Opera mini browser is much more popular, with 41 percent of the mobile traffic to Jumia Nigeria coming from Opera mini.
One reason for this could be that countries with higher levels of income have been found to have more users accessing the internet with heavier browsers like chrome – which typically have higher system requirements.
Opera mini is a lighter browser in terms of data usage and is popular among new mobile internet users who have lower incomes and can’t afford costly internet data packs.
A recent report from Opera determined the savings on mobile data costs for Opera mini users in Nigeria has amounted to about $198 million (N39.5 billion) over a 10-month period, due to its data compression technology.
This is a clear example of the ripple effect that customer enjoy when a slight change is introduced by one of the digital ecosystem players.
On our end, an immediate key priority is to enhance the desktop user experience (which accounts for almost 30 percent of Jumia’s traffic and almost 40 percent of orders placed) by delivering a progressive web application that bridges the gap between conventional web pages and native mobile applications, to give customers a faster web and desktop experience that includes functionalities like push notifications and the ability to browse while offline.
The trend since 2013 was for people to use their mobile phones to browse and look up products and then purchase them on their desktop.
Now customers are checking out and paying for orders from the mobile app or the mobile friendly version of the website. This is a trend we foresee growing in the future based on the current figures.
Mobile customers (both those who use the Jumia app and those who browse from mobile browsers) account for 63 percent of all orders on Jumia Nigeria.
Across the 15 markets where the study was carried out, that figure is at 47 percent. With a whopping 2,236,000 Jumia app downloads from 2015 to 2016 (a 128 percent increase), Jumia app users form a significant portion of the mobile traffic on Jumia Nigeria. Currently, 1 out of 2 mobile visitors in Nigeria are coming from the Jumia mobile app.
The highest conversion rate recorded in the last year has been on the app. That is the number of completed orders in relation to the number of visitors is higher on the mobile app than on the mobile or desktop versions of the website.
This could be driven by the fact that the app is exclusively designed for mobile and therefore has a faster and better shopping experience for users.
Hence, the priority for mcommerce for the next few years is to continually democratize the usage of the app and incentivize an increase in usage by maintaining a better browsing experience and lower data consumption.
Strategic collaborations with phone operators and data providers are also a key factor for enhancing customer experience.
For example, the 0 data usage (free browsing) offered to MTN sim card owners when they browse on both the Jumia mobile site and the app will remain a key feature and value-added service for Jumia customers.
Nigeria’s mobile trends for 2017 are positive with a steady growth of smartphones adoption and diversity. These increased offerings deliver more value for customers and cheaper access to internet connectivity.
As smartphone brands and mobile operators continue to invest in research and development and innovative data packages, and ecommerce providers invest in customer service, logistics and marketing over the next few years, our outlook is for an even more synergized digital ecosystem over the next few years.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Despite signs that Nigeria’s headline inflation is easing, rising food prices continue to threaten the country’s inflation outlook, the chief executive of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Mr Muda Yusuf, has warned.
He noted that structural inflationary pressures in the real economy remain pronounced despite improving macroeconomic stability.
In a policy brief released following the inflation report, he noted that headline inflation eased marginally, while month-on-month change moderated from 1.75 per cent to 1.66 per cent, indicating that headline inflation has largely plateaued.
According to him, the dominant concern in the latest inflation report is the renewed acceleration in food inflation.
This growth, he said, suggested that food prices have resumed an upward trajectory after a brief period of moderation.
Warning that a renewed increase in food inflation has significant economic and social implications, he stressed that food inflation remained the biggest driver of Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis, stressing that rising food prices continue to erode household purchasing power, worsen poverty and food insecurity while weakening the inclusiveness of the current reform programme.
He maintained that sustained moderation in food prices is critical to improving citizens’ welfare and strengthening public confidence in the ongoing economic reforms.
Acknowledging the easing of core inflation as encouraging, he drew attention to the persistence of urban inflation.
At 16.08 per cent, urban inflation exceeded the national headline inflation rate of 15.91 per cent, while month-on-month urban inflation increased from 1.99 per cent to 2.13 per cent.
According to Mr Yusuf, the figures indicated that inflationary pressures remained particularly intense across urban centres.
He attributed the rising urban inflation partly to increasing population displacement from rural communities affected by insecurity, expressing worry that as more households migrate to urban areas, demand for housing, transportation, utilities and other essential services would increase, adding to inflationary pressures and creating additional urbanisation challenges.
Addressing insecurity in farming communities, he said, was important not only for protecting lives and property and boosting agricultural output but also for easing cost pressures in urban centres, adding that the June CPI data reinforced the view that Nigeria’s inflation challenge is predominantly structural rather than monetary.
On the monetary policy outlook, he said the data do not justify further monetary tightening, arguing that headline inflation has largely stabilised.
The CPPE chief expected the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to retain the current monetary policy rate at its next meeting, adding that the priority is for monetary and fiscal authorities to work together to accelerate structural reforms to expand food supply, improve logistics, reduce energy and production costs, lower debt service costs, as well as strengthen domestic value chains.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
Additional shares of Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc have been listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited.
The new equities were added to the company’s existing stocks on Customs Street on Thursday, July 16, 2026, a notice from the bourse confirmed.
Business Post reports the total new ordinary shares of Sterling Holdings listed yesterday were 13,812,239,000 units.
They were from the offer for subscription of 12,581,000,000 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each sold for N7.00 per share, which was oversubscribed by investors.
The financial institution brought the new shares to the stock exchange to increase its total issued and fully paid-up shares to 65,929,251,414 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each from 52,117,012,414 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each.
“Trading licence holders are hereby notified that an additional 13,812,239,000 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each of Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc were on Thursday, July 16, 2026, listed on the daily official list of Nigerian Exchange Limited.
“The additional shares listed on NGX arose from the company’s offer for subscription of 12,581,000,000 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each at N7.00 per share.
“With the listing of the additional shares, the total issued and fully paid-up shares of Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc have now increased from 52,117,012,414 to 65,929,251,414 ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each,” the notice read.
By Adedapo Adesanya
President Bola Tinubu has signed a Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, establishing a new framework to coordinate the regulation of virtual assets across government agencies as Nigeria seeks to curb fraud while supporting innovation in the digital economy.
The Executive Order, which takes immediate effect, creates a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to harmonise oversight of cryptocurrencies, tokenised assets, stablecoins, and other digital assets without creating a new regulator.
As part of the new framework, the CBN will establish a regulatory sandbox that will allow eligible firms to test virtual asset products, blockchain solutions, and related services under regulatory supervision before they are introduced to the wider market.
The development was disclosed in a statement issued on Friday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga.
According to the presidency, the Executive Order responds to the growing complexity of virtual assets, which increasingly cut across the traditional boundaries of currencies, securities, commodities, and payment systems.
The fragmented regulatory environment has left gaps that have exposed Nigeria to money laundering, terrorism financing, cybersecurity and data privacy risks, fraud, and revenue losses.
The government said some unregistered operators have exploited these regulatory gaps to defraud unsuspecting Nigerians, resulting in significant financial losses.
“The Order is designed to close these gaps through supervisory coordination, without introducing new layers of regulation or displacing the mandates of existing agencies,” the statement read.
Under the new framework, the Virtual Asset Council will be chaired by the CBN, with the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) serving as vice chairs. Other members include the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).
The Council will provide policy direction, improve cooperation among participating agencies, and work with the Attorney General of the Federation to develop a harmonised legal and institutional framework for the sector.
The Executive Order also establishes a Virtual Asset Office, which will serve as the Council’s operational arm. The office will be domiciled at the CBN and will coordinate information sharing, applications, and reporting among the participating agencies through a shared supervisory technology platform.
The presidency stressed that the Executive Order does not create a new regulator or transfer statutory powers from existing agencies, clarifying that instead, each institution will continue to exercise its existing mandate while working within a coordinated framework.
Under the arrangement, registration of virtual asset businesses will depend on the nature of the service being offered.
Activities classified as securities will continue to be regulated by the SEC, while payment, settlement, custody, and other services involving non-security virtual assets will fall under the CBN.
Where there is uncertainty over regulatory jurisdiction, the Virtual Asset Council will determine the appropriate supervising agency.
“The sandbox will provide a controlled environment in which eligible operators can test and operate virtual asset products, services, and blockchain-based solutions under close supervision, enabling the participating agencies to assess the implications for monetary sovereignty, financial stability, market integrity, consumer protection, financial inclusion, and revenue administration before products reach the wider market,” the statement added.
According to the presidency, the sandbox will enable regulators to evaluate the implications of emerging products for financial stability, monetary sovereignty, consumer protection, financial inclusion, market integrity, and revenue administration.
The central bank is expected to announce further details of the sandbox.
