Skip to content

Home
Africa News
Business
World

About NewsHub
Cart
Checkout
Checkout - News Hub PRO
Contact Us
Home
Homepage - mobile
Login/Register
Login/Register - News Hub PRO
Menu Popup - News Hub PRO
My account
My Account - News Hub PRO
Plans Select - News Hub PRO
Premium Content
Privacy Policy
Shop
Terms of Use

Kenya could become a regional hub for African social commerce

Africa News News African September 17, 2026 · Comments off

For years, live shopping, or live commerce, was presented as the next big revolution in retail. That description is now outdated, at least for Kenya.

Live commerce has already arrived. What we are witnessing on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp is the emergence of a new retail model in which entertainment, product discovery, customer interaction, marketing and payment increasingly happen through the same digital ecosystem.

Kenyan traders are already demonstrating clothes, shoes, cosmetics, electronics, furniture and other products through livestreams and social-media videos, while customers place orders through comments, direct messages or WhatsApp and pay digitally. Mitumba traders, for example, are using TikTok livestreams to display merchandise, interact with customers in real time and sell to buyers locally and abroad.

The important question, therefore, is no longer whether Kenya will adopt live commerce, but how far this model can go and how quickly it can scale.

Live commerce originated in China through platforms such as Alibaba’s Taobao Live and ByteDance’s Douyin, transforming shopping from a passive activity into an interactive form of entertainment. Instead of searching for a product, reading a description and clicking “buy”, consumers watch someone demonstrate the product, ask questions, see what other customers are buying, receive a limited-time offer and make an immediate purchase.

The model combines three powerful forces—content, trust and transaction—and that combination is now finding fertile ground in Kenya.

Globally, live commerce continues to expand rapidly. Recent estimates put the global live-commerce market at about $172.9 billion in 2025 and in 2026, with strong growth expected through the rest of the decade. Asia-Pacific remains the dominant market. The significance of this growth, however, goes beyond market size.

Live commerce is changing the economics of customer acquisition by combining product demonstration, persuasion, customer service and transaction in one environment. In many markets, interactive selling can generate stronger engagement and conversion than conventional digital advertising because consumers can see products demonstrated, ask questions and receive immediate reassurance before buying.

The US and other developed markets have accelerated adoption through platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Amazon and Meta. Creator-led commerce increasingly combines advertising, entertainment and transactions in a single customer journey. What began as a social-media experiment is therefore becoming an important component of mainstream digital retail.

Kenya, however, does not have to wait for this revolution. It is already participating in it.

The country has many of the ingredients required for live commerce to flourish. DataReportal estimates that Kenya had about 23.4 million internet users and 18.4 million social-media user identities in late 2025.

TikTok’s reported advertising reach among adults was also about 18.4 million, while Instagram had approximately 3.95 million users. These are not simply communication statistics; they increasingly represent commercial infrastructure. The consumer is already on the platform, the entrepreneur is already producing content and the payment system is already available.

This is where Kenya possesses a particularly important advantage. The country’s mobile-money ecosystem, led by M-Pesa, has effectively removed one of the biggest barriers to digital commerce: payment friction. By July 2026, Kenya had 94.35 million registered mobile-money accounts, while agent cash-in and cash-out transactions were worth approximately Sh728.7 billion during the month.

A Kenyan entrepreneur can therefore advertise a product on TikTok, demonstrate it during a livestream, answer questions through WhatsApp, receive an M-Pesa payment and arrange delivery through a courier or boda boda operator—all without owning a conventional shop or sophisticated e-commerce website. The smartphone has effectively become the shop, advertising agency, salesperson and cash register.

Kenya’s e-commerce evolution may consequently be different from the traditional Western model, where consumers moved from physical shops to large online marketplaces and dedicated websites. Kenya is developing a more mobile-first, social-first and conversational form of commerce. The customer does not necessarily go looking for a shop; increasingly, the shop comes looking for the customer.

A Communications Authority survey reported in January 2026 found that mobile applications accounted for 44.8 percent of online order placements and receipts, while WhatsApp accounted for 20.2 percent. Social-media commerce and marketplaces accounted for another 18 percent. The message is clear: Kenyan commerce is increasingly taking place on platforms that consumers already use for communication and entertainment.

This has enormous implications for SMEs and young entrepreneurs. A business no longer necessarily needs expensive premises in a shopping centre or central business district to reach a national market. A smartphone, internet connection, products and the ability to create compelling content can provide access to thousands of potential customers.

For young Kenyans, this creates opportunities not only as traders but also as live sellers, influencers, affiliate marketers, product curators, content creators, social-media managers, customer-service agents and logistics coordinators. Photographers, videographers, graphic designers, delivery providers, warehouse operators and creator agencies can all become part of the emerging ecosystem.

The opportunity extends further into financial inclusion. Many social-commerce businesses are generating genuine sales but remain outside conventional SME financing because they lack audited accounts, formal premises or conventional collateral. Yet digital transactions create data. With appropriate consent, governance and risk controls, transaction histories could support alternative credit assessment and enable merchants to access inventory finance, working capital, insurance and other financial services.

Financial institutions and fintech companies should therefore begin treating social-commerce merchants as an emerging SME segment rather than as informal traders operating outside the financial system. The transaction data generated by digital commerce could eventually enable lenders to develop cash-flow and transaction-based financing products better suited to these businesses.

The opportunity is not confined to retail. Manufacturers can demonstrate products directly to consumers; agribusinesses can showcase specialty products to domestic and diaspora markets; hotels and restaurants can sell experiences rather than simply rooms and meals; real-estate companies can conduct virtual property showcases; and training institutions can market courses through creator-led content.

The underlying principle is simple: if something can be demonstrated, explained or experienced digitally, it can potentially become part of social commerce.

Established Kenyan businesses must therefore recognize that live commerce is no longer an interesting digital experiment. It is becoming a strategic competitive channel. Retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, hospitality businesses, agribusinesses and FMCG companies that rely exclusively on conventional advertising and physical distribution risk being overtaken by smaller, more agile businesses that can communicate directly with consumers every day.

Live commerce can potentially reduce customer-acquisition costs, improve inventory turnover, create direct-to-consumer channels, generate immediate customer feedback and allow businesses to expand geographically without proportionate investment in physical outlets. A fashion house can launch a collection live; a beauty company can demonstrate a product; an electronics distributor can answer technical questions; and a hotel can take potential customers inside its experience—all while converting engagement into sales.

Yet this revolution also carries risks. Fraud, counterfeit products, misleading advertising, non-delivery, data misuse and weak consumer protection can undermine trust. Businesses also face the risk of becoming excessively dependent on social-media algorithms they do not control. Changes in platform policies or algorithms can sharply reduce visibility and increase customer-acquisition costs.

Entrepreneurs should therefore not confuse followers with a business. The real asset is the customer relationship. Businesses need to build their own customer databases, loyalty programmes, websites, WhatsApp communities and other channels that enable them to maintain direct relationships with customers rather than depend entirely on a particular social-media platform.

Government also has a role. Consumer protection, data protection, taxation, counterfeit control, digital identity, payment security and dispute resolution will become increasingly important as social commerce expands. Regulation should protect consumers and legitimate businesses without suffocating innovation.

For investors, the opportunity is no longer simply to build another live-commerce platform. The larger opportunity is to build the infrastructure around merchants already participating in the ecosystem, fulfilment, logistics, warehousing, inventory finance, merchant analytics, payment integration, digital identity, creator management and cross-border distribution.

Kenya could potentially become a regional hub for African social commerce. Its combination of widespread mobile money, substantial social-media usage, entrepreneurial SMEs and increasingly sophisticated digital consumers provides a strong foundation for Kenyan businesses to reach East Africa and the African diaspora.

The experience of M-Pesa provides an important lesson. Kenya did not wait for developed markets to perfect mobile banking before developing its own model. It leapfrogged parts of the traditional banking system. Live commerce offers another opportunity to leapfrog. Rather than replicating the expensive infrastructure of conventional retail and traditional e-commerce, Kenya can build on what already exists: smartphones, social networks, mobile money and entrepreneurial communities.

The transformation is therefore already underway. The question is no longer whether Kenyans will shop through social media. They already are. The real question is whether businesses will learn to convert attention into sustainable revenue, whether financial institutions will learn to finance these new enterprises, and whether policymakers will create an environment in which the sector can scale responsibly.

Live commerce is not the future of Kenyan retail. It is already part of its present. The next phase will be about scale. The businesses that understand that the smartphone is no longer simply a communication device, but a shop, marketing platform, payment terminal and customer-relationship channel, will be best positioned to capture the next generation of Kenyan commerce.

For Kenya, therefore, live shopping should no longer be viewed as a distant technological disruption waiting to happen. It has already arrived. The opportunity now is to scale it, finance it, regulate it intelligently and build the African commerce ecosystem around it.

The writer is Economist and CEO, Miradi Capital

Calendar

September 2026
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

You may be interested in:

From Oakland, California, to Rwanda: Creating My Own Garden of Eden Off the Grid 🏡🌱

Uganda 🇺🇬 Vs India 🇮🇳 flag art 🎨 on water 💦 drop #art #shorts #drawing #independenceday #viral

Jibrin warns APC govs against embarrassing Wike

Cheruiyot: Kindiki will remain Ruto’s running mate in 2027

موهبة كبيرة 🔥 #الجزائر #algeria #اكسبلور #الجزائر_اليوم

Cameroon-CAR Border Gold Mine Collapse Kills Over 100

Oumy Mbaye • Oumy Leya ❤️❤️#shorts #senegal #evenprod #marodi #wallyseck #miaguisse

HRW says Russian paramilitaries killed 9 civilians in Mali

Watch Sky News

Ivory Coast

©2026 WordPress Video Theme by WPEnjoy