The e/m-commerce

The general goal of IPEMED’s reflection is to make southern Mediterranean countries evolve from digital consumption to content production and high-added-value activities.

In this context, the Institute chose to focus, in 2015, on the “e/m-commerce” sector, on-line commerce and commerce via mobile phones (GSM), a developing sector in the South and undeniably promising for the reinforcement of the low South-South and North-South economic exchanges and for the creation of skilled jobs. It is also a sector in which the reflection on co-production can be carried further by studying the existing conditions and those to be created to encourage the sector’s development. Besides, it enables to address the issue of La Verticale by connecting it to the realities of the sector in two African countries.

A study on “e/m commerce” has been carried out in Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. The main objective is to enable a better understanding of the sector in chosen countries and to see if regional integration dynamics exist or could be developed.

More precisely, the report seeks to:
1- present an assessment of “e/m-commerce” in these countries;
2- identify the challenges, potentials and obstacles to development of the sector at the national level in a regional integration logic;
3- offer a comparative analysis of the “e/m-commerce” sector in these countries by highlighting the existing complementarity between these countries;
4- identify the obstacles and assets of a greater North-African integration;
5- identify successful national and regional initiatives ;
6- make recommendations in view of a better North-South and South-South integration of the sector relying on dynamics currently at work in other integrated zones in the world such as the EU and ASEAN.