Namibia has the connectivity and logistics infrastructure in place to support growth in e-commerce.Most of the country is covered by mobile networks, with fibre joining all the larger towns and cities. Namibia has been connected to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) via a landing point in Swakopmund since May 2012. Zambia and Botswana are connected to the WACS system through Telkom Namibia, which has laid fibre cables to Angola, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa. The government network backbone infrastructure has been redesigned and is being upgraded to handle 600 Megabits per second from WAC S . In February 2021 it was announced that Paratus and Telecom Namibia had signed an agreement to land the Equiano subsea cable in Namibia. It is expected to go live in the second half of 2022, according to Submarine Cable Networks.Paratus is a pan-African full-service network operator with operations in six SADC countries.Covid-19 is accelerating uptake. One of the respondents to a research study conducted by the Namibian-German Centre for Logistics stated: “E-commerce growth has been 'turbocharged' by several years, which is good for business.”For its part the logistics sector is expected to help reduce risks for e-commerce by providing “greater alternative scenario planning (e.g. stock location, dealing with panic buying)” to ensure readiness (service, people and equipment) for when demand restarts, according to the Namibia State of Logistics Report 2020, which was released in March 2021. It is estimated that there were 1.31 million internet users in Namibia in January 2021, which is a 24 000 increase (1.8%) over 2020.That represents more than 51% of the population of 2.56 million, 52.5% of which is urbanised, according to official statistics.Around 800 000 Namibians are active social media users, which is 31.2% of the population.Another measure of connectivity is the number of mobile devices – 2.94 million, or 114% of the population.The potential for e-commerce growth is shown in World Bank estimates, which show that 15.4% of the population aged 15 and above have credit cards, and 43.4% have a mobile money account – either or both of which are needed for e-commerce payments.Nearly 30% of Namibians own at least one type of digital wallet.Some 18.3% of connected Namibians have started making purchases or paying bills online since the signing by President Geingob on November 7, 2019, of the Electronic Transactions Act.This regulates the conduct of business online, and opens up a variety of online payment solutions such as PayPal. The law also allows for electronic commerce and communications with public and private bodies, institutions and citizens and provides the framework for a safe, secure and effective environment for the consumer, business and public agencies or bodies to conduct and use electronic transactions. Export Enterprises is quoted by Standard Bank as stating that the Namibian government has been working on an electronic transaction and cybercrime bill since 2017. "It is estimated that there were 1.31 million internet users in Namibia in January 2021, which is a 24 000 increase (1.8%) over 2020.
