Last week we discussed the odd position of local ecommerce in South Africa as it tries to continue operations under the lockdown. In this edition of the africast we continue this conversation as some important events have happened in the last week.
Before that, however, we talk about some of the news. First up is an international ecommerce giant – Amazon. It has remained open in the US with disastrous consequences. Next up is ransomware, which has seen a drop locally as our poor GDP makes us a less than ideal target for criminals online. Yay? Finally there’s the PumPix, a combination of Spider-Man’s web shooters and a sanitation product. Again: yay?
For our feature this week: online commerce was operating under limited circumstances mostly allowed to only courier items which were deemed essential. That changed just yesterday, however, as the South African government decided to allow online retailers to open the flood gates and sell all of its wares. While before you were limited to things like groceries and medication, you can now buy anything that was for sale before the pandemic and the lockdown started.
As always we welcome your opinion about anything discussed in the africast. Twitter and Facebook are the best places to speak to us.
Mentioned in this africast:
- Amazon’s COVID-19 response is lesson for local etailers on what not to do
- South Africa’s low GDP makes us an unattractive target for ransomware says Sophos
- PumPix are Spider-Man’s web shooters but with hand sanitiser
- All forms of online shopping now allowed locally, with a few conditions
- Three things you need to do when receiving your online order