Morocco is among the top 10 countries with the best online shopping readiness in Africa, according to the UNCTAD B2C e-Commerce Index. The latter measures an economy's preparedness to support online shopping. Morocco is ranked 81st in the world by the UNCTAD B2C e-Commerce Index, a report that measures an economy's preparedness to support online shopping. Conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and published on December the 10th, the report evaluates how often citizens in 151 countries purchase stuff from the internet. According to the findings of the e-commerce report, the «biggest gain in secure internet server penetration was in Morocco, with an increase of 15 percentage points». The North African Kingdom is ranked 5th in Africa, behind Mauritius 55th, Nigeria 75th, South Africa 77th and Tunisia 79th. Positioned among the top 10 African countries in UNCTAD B2C e-Commerce index, Morocco is topping Ghana 85th, Kenya 89th, Uganda 99th, Botswana 100th and Cameroon 101st. In the Arab World, Morocco is positioned 9th behind, the United Arab Emirates 33rd, Saudi Arabia 52nd, Kuwait 59th, Qatar 60th, Bahrain 62nd, Oman 72nd, Jordan 73rd and Tunisia 79th. The latter tops the North Africa region alongside Morocco, leaving Libya 107th, Algeria 111th, Egypt 113th, and Mauritania 139th behind. Boosting internet penetration to grow e-commerce in Africa The report relies on six indices to measure how often individuals use internet in their daily purchases. Accordingly, the share of individuals using internet in Morocco amounts 60%, while the percentage of people with an account in the country is 29. The people with secure internet servers in Morocco is 54 percent while the index value granted by the report to the Kingdom in 2017 is limited to 50.9. Although the UN survey ranks countries from all over the world, it pays close attention to Africa, stressing that the continent «needs to boost Internet penetration to grow e-commerce». According to the authors of the report, African countries have to «get more of their existing Internet users to trust the online market for making purchases». «Unlike developed markets such as the European Union, where 68% of internet users made an online purchase in 2017, the corresponding figure in Africa was only 13% on average in 2017», reported the annual survey. Increasing the number of online shoppers to 50% would allow the continent to gain an additional «77 million online shoppers and the estimated B2C revenue would more than double». For the record, the UNCTAD B2C e-Commerce Index global ranking was topped by the Netherlands 1st, Singapore 2nd, Switzerland 3rd, the United Kingdom 4th and Norway 5th. Meanwhile, Guinea 149th, Chad 150th and Niger 151st were at the bottom of the ranking.
