FEATURE: DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
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Chris de Beer, Africa
Regional Manager at
infoSource SA, looks at
how printer OEMs have
fared in Africa.
“A
frica is a nation that suffers
from terrible disease,”
said George Bush in 2001.
Thankfully, more people are becoming
aware that Africa is a continent and just
what it means to conduct business among
her 54 independent nations that could
represent spectacular growth for many.
Africans realise that, like the EU and other
areas have demonstrated, there is strength
in collective bargaining. There are now
eight economic regions stretching the
length and breadth of the continent, from
the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) to the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC), the East African Community (EAC)
to the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS).
For printer vendors, Southern Africa (South
Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia and
Zimbabwe) achieved nearly 80 000 copier/
MFP unit sales in 2017. Production print
sales numbers reached more than 800.
Angola and Zambia offered just over 1,500
copier/MFP unit sales in 2017 but just 10
production units. Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory
Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, Gabon and Senegal
(West Africa) supported more than 31,000
units of copier/MFP sales in 2017 and over
250 production units. East Africa (Ethiopia,
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) collectively
represented nearly 8,000 unit sales of
copier/MFPs in 2017 and we expect more in
2018. A total of 86% of the units are black
and white (BW), while in contrast, vendors
sold 43 production printers in the region.
In Southern Africa the 20-39 pages per
minute (ppm) BW devices have gradually
lost ground since 2015 to the 40-59 ppm
devices. In the colour segment, the 20-29
ppm and 30-49 ppm devices are most
popular with the faster category retaining its
top status and even stretching a small lead.
Overall unit sales volumes have remained
consistent for the faster of the two, but the
slower category has seen steadily declining
sales numbers since 2015.
Potentially having the biggest impact on
sales in the region is South Africa’s steady
GDP decline since 2011. Back then the
GDP was over US$400 billion, dipping to a
low of nearly US$300 billion by 2016 and
popping back up to nearly US$350 billion in
2017. But South Africa once more entered
a technical recession in September 2018,
the second since 2009, and now a not
uncharacteristic state looking back a couple
of decades.
Zambia is a bigger market than Angola. That
runs counter to a GDP comparison of the
two countries, in which Angola’s grew from
US$95 billion in 2016 to US$124 billion in
2017 (with a population of 28.8 million)
while Zambia’s went from nearly US$21
Printer OEMs pluck
rich opportunities from
Africa’s emerging markets
46
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