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The Market: in foreign migrants and traders
250 000 foreign African visitors to South Africa spend R 12 billion a year on goods with the intention of repatriating these back to their home-countries to resell
Research conducted by SBP and Markdata is extremely revealing of the intentions of African visitors. They are from a wide range of African countries with 18% from Zimbabwe followed by 9% each from Kenya and Nigeria. The majority make quarterly trips to South Africa. Their reasons for visiting are varied:
| Saving / investing money in SA to use later | 18% |
| Buying and selling goods in SA | 7% |
| Making and selling goods in SA | 8% |
| Selling goods made by self in home country | 23% |
| Selling goods made by others in home country | 26% |
| Buying supplies for family in home country | 68% |
| Buying goods for resale in home country | 72% |
The most popular goods purchased include:
| Clothes | 63% |
| CDs, DVDs, music and computer games | 38% |
| Clothing accessories | 31% |
| Electronic appliances and accessories | 26% |
| Beds, blankets and linen | 23% |
| Building material | 22% |
| Home décor | 20% |
| Jewellery | 19% |
| Computers, computer components and printers | 16% |
| Cell phones, cell phone accessories | 14% |
| Kitchen accessories (cutlery) | 13% |
| Bags and backpacks | 13% |
| Beauty products | 11% |
| Food | 9% |
There is a wide range of spending on each trip but the median is over R 12 000 per trip with some traders purchasing as much as R 40 000 per trip regularly. And they would spend more if it wasn't for the cost of crime, South African xenophobia, and harrasment by police and government officials.
According to the South African Migrant Project run by IDASA migrants work significantly harder than South Africans - 64 hours per week - and many declare that they despise the South African work ethic. Despite this - where they trade locally - they create an average of three jobs per business.
One of the biggest obstacles to doing business here is that they find it impossible to open bank accounts or get access to credit.
Opportunities presented by African migrants:
- Trading accounts allow them to invest their money and do business in South Africa - currently they can only open Post Office accounts
- Many send money home via remittences - this presents an opportunity to offer a range of financial services
- Develop export relationships with these traders - they take the risk on your goods and you can assess whether your products would be well-received in their home countries
- Develop partnerships around trading sites and business opportunities
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