Almost 70% of South Africans surveyed do their online shopping without getting out of bed. That’s according to a new survey of South African online shoppers by global payments platform PayPal, which also found that 60% of online customers shop from work, and 58.4% log on to shop while watching TV.

Convenience, it seems, is key when it comes to e-commerce. In an era where time is a hot commodity, e-commerce is pushing all the right buttons. Another new study – of South Africa’s FMCG retail industry, by Trade Intelligence – indicates that e-commerce is the fastest-growing retail channel.

The study estimated a 40% year-on-year growth in online FMCG, driven largely by the growing popularity of on-demand grocery platforms in South Africa such as Checkers Sixty60, PnP asap!, Spar2U and Woolies Dash.

As Arthur Goldstuck, CEO of technology research firm World Wide Worx (WWWx), says, ‘online retail has moved from being an experiment on the margins to a structural force in the economy’.

WWWx’s Online Retail in South Africa 2025 report indicates that online retail sales in South Africa grew by 35% in 2024 to ZAR96 billion and that ‘nearly one in every ten rand spent on retail [is] online’. The report predicts that online sales will exceed ZAR130 billion by the end of 2025, exceeding last year’s pace of growth by three percentage points.

Clothing makes up the largest percentage of online retail sales in South Africa at 30.2%, followed by groceries at 18.4%.

Almost half of online shoppers surveyed preferred to buy from local platforms, with Takealot the clear favourite, despite the entry of international platforms such as Temu, Shein and Amazon in 2024.

‘Takealot was the only game in town in 2023. That shifted dramatically in 2024, [but] despite the arrival of Shein and Amazon, Takealot still increased its share,’ says Goldstuck.

The WWWx report says the introduction of new VAT and customs rules by South African tax authorities should cramp the style of the China-based fast-retail platforms, but their impact cannot be ignored.

Shein and Temu captured an estimated ZAR7.3 billion in turnover in the fashion sector and 40% of online sales by 2024. And Temu has already responded to the new customs rules by launching a local warehouse dispatch service, although the categories of goods it can dispatch locally are limited.

Andy Higgins, CEO of e-commerce service provider Bob Group, highlights the attraction of Shein and Temu to local shoppers, saying ‘many of the Chinese platforms continue to offer compelling value’ compared to local retailers. ‘Their scale, sourcing efficiency and price positioning still resonate strongly with cost-conscious South African consumers,’ Higgins told My Broadband in October.

Temu makes the Top 5 South African clothing retailers (by share of wallet), according to H1 2025 market research by Yazi and Reveal. Shein came in at No 6, ahead of stalwarts Bash, Foschini, PnP Clothing and Jet.

On a continental level, e-commerce is also showing impressive growth – data from the Imarc Group suggests the African e-commerce market will top the US$1 trillion mark by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.8% from 2025.

An earlier study by the International Trade Administration predicted that the number of e-commerce users in the region would reach 500 million by 2025, with a penetration rate of 40%, at a CAGR of about 18%.

Nigeria’s Jumia remains Africa’s largest online marketplace, attracting 23 million monthly visits – this despite a number of hurdles that typically are not experienced in developed markets.

Abdesslam Benzitouni, the global head of public affairs and communications at Jumia, highlights those challenges. ‘These include infrastructure gaps, such as poor road networks and inconsistent addressing systems, fragmented supplier ecosystems, where many sellers are informal or unstructured, requiring more hands-on onboarding and co-ordination, and cross-border logistical complexity, given regulatory differences and limited regional integration,’ he says in an interview with Logistics Update Africa.

While the global logistics sector is becoming increasingly automated, the continent’s first-mile challenges mean human intervention is still required. Benzitouni explains that Jumia is helping digitise small-scale and informal sellers through its vendor centre, which simplifies product upload, order tracking and fulfilment. ‘A key part of our model is the drop-off station network, where sellers physically meet with Jumia representatives,’ he says.

Amazon has adopted a similar strategy in South Africa, opening a walk-in ‘seller success centre’ at its Cape Town headquarters at the beginning of the year to attract more sellers to its marketplace.

‘By providing hands-on support and resources, we’re working to bridge the technological divide for those who historically have not been able to access e-commerce opportunities,’ said Robert Koen, MD of Amazon Sub-Saharan Africa, at the launch.

Suzelle Abe, head of marketplace for Amazon South Africa, said the platform wanted to provide business access to the tools needed to take the first steps into the digital realm. ‘This initiative empowers small businesses to scale both locally and globally, while at the same time broadening customer choices. Ultimately, it’s about fostering a vibrant seller community that contributes to our country’s prosperity.’

Another strategy adopted by Jumia, which operates mainly in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Uganda, is to centralise its warehousing.

‘We operate one large centralised warehouse per country, designed to handle high inventory volumes and streamline fulfilment. This centralised model, backed by our proprietary technology platform, allows us to maintain better control, ensure faster processing and optimise storage for a wide range of products. It also enables more efficient co-ordination with sellers and logistics partners and faster consolidation for last-mile delivery,’ notes Benzitouni.

Amazon has two fulfilment centres in South Africa – in Johannesburg and in Cape Town – and collaborates with click-and-collect companies such as Pargo and home courier companies for last-mile delivery.

It still only accounts for a small slice of the e-commerce pie in South Africa, recording only 2.9 million visits in August 2025, according to digital marketing platform Semrush. However, according to Abe, the e-commerce giant is in South Africa ‘for the long run’.

There’s no doubt that the e-commerce market in Africa is becoming competitive, and with the advent of new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) it will no doubt become even more so.

‘We’re seeing the end of AI experimentation and the start of AI implementation,’ Caleb Shepard, media director of the Digital Media Collective (TDMC), told Google’s AI in Action event in Cape Town in July. TDMC partners with Google, Meta and e-commerce service provider Shopify to offer online marketing strategies.

‘Our clients who operate Shopify stores need to understand that AI isn’t coming, it’s here – and their competitors are already using it.’

Developments include Google’s Project Mariner, which can browse websites, compare prices and fill out forms automatically; real-time translation capabilities that will allow Shopify merchants to serve customers in multiple South African lan-guages without hiring translators; and Gemini 2.5 Pro, which analyses customer data and predicts purchasing patterns with human-like reasoning.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT is developing checkout capabilities that could bypass traditional e-commerce platforms, and Meta is building AI shopping directly into Instagram and Facebook.

The potential impact on consumers is undeniable – voice-activated shopping in your own language; the ability to do a visual search for items using your smartphone camera; and automatic reordering based on your purchasing patterns.

The onus is on merchants to live up to the challenge, perhaps adopting one or all of the technologies available – dynamic pricing that responds to its competitors; inventory management based on AI demand forecasting; AI-generated or optimised marketing content; and even generating product lifestyle imagery and product descriptions.

As Shepard said at the Google event, ‘The retail winners won’t be those who choose one AI platform. Their success requires understanding how Google’s search AI, Meta’s social commerce AI and Shopify’s merchant tools work together.’

Shopping online is getting a lot easier and more convenient; to keep up, Africa must strengthen its delivery mechanisms.

Images: iStock, Unsplash