Cross-border growth is an operations problem dressed up as a marketing one. Brands that fix the checkout first spend far less getting customers to it/Magnific.com
South African brands have been handed a reprieve in the United States, but not certainty. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the US trade programme that has given eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the American market since 2000, has been extended to 2028.
That is well short of the 15 years South Africa was pushing for and the US President retains the authority to determine AGOA eligibility every year.
There is more pressure on top of that. A 12.5% tariff under Section 301 of US trade law has applied to South African goods since 24 July. Several products remain exempt – including platinum and other precious metals, various citrus products, fruit juices and nuts. For most exporters, though, the US has become a harder market to plan around.
The smarter growth story lies north, not west. TDMC (The Digital Media Collective), a South African digital agency, services clients in 15 markets and more than 120 brands across Sub-Saharan Africa. The catch is that most brands will get trading north wrong by treating the continent as one market.
Speaking in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly, Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), said Africa’s digital economy could generate more than $700 billion by 2035, but that depends on removing the regulatory barriers that stop digital businesses operating across borders.
Those barriers are practical – businesses struggle to receive cross-border payments, verify customers in another country or legally transfer data across borders.
These barriers show up long before customs. For an online brand, crossing into Botswana, Kenya or Zambia is decided at the checkout. The brands that win are the ones that stop treating Africa as a single market and start building for each one.
Our insights are shaped by the agency’s own growth. TDMC recently welcomed CA&S Group as a strategic 30% shareholder, with a pathway to majority ownership, a move that pairs CA&S’s physical route-to-market scale with TDMC’s specialist digital commerce capability across Southern and East Africa.
Converting rand prices at the day’s exchange rate is not localisation, says Ingram. “Currency swings, local price anchors and what competitors charge on the ground decide whether a basket converts.”
Shoppers pay the way they already pay. “If your checkout only offers the payment methods that work in South Africa, you’ve built a store much of the market won’t use,” Ingram explains. Payment preferences differ from country to country, and a checkout that ignores that quietly turns buyers away.
In e-commerce, reliability carries more weight than price. “A missed delivery window does more damage than a higher price,” says Ingram. Brands should be upfront about how long delivery really takes, what it really costs, and how returns work before the customer clicks buy. “Honest expectations build more trust than optimistic ones.”
Features, ad billing and payment integrations that work at home may not be available, or may behave differently, in another market. “Check before you commit budget,” Ingram advises. “A campaign built on assumptions about platform capability can fail on launch day.”
When people get paid, and what it costs them to load your page, shape when and how they shop. As Ingram explains, heavy sites and badly timed campaigns ‘burn money quietly’. Lightweight pages and campaigns timed to local pay cycles protect both the customer’s data bill and the brand’s media spend.
These insights highlight that the focus for brands wanting to extend into Africa shouldn’t be on advertising creative or audience targeting, instead it should be on pricing, payments, logistics, platform capability and the economics of the customer’s own phone.
Cross-border growth is an operations problem dressed up as a marketing one. Brands that fix the checkout first spend far less getting customers to it. The brands that benefit will be the ones that do the work market by market, building a pricing model, a checkout, a delivery promise and a media plan that fit each country’s shoppers.
* Summary created by AI
Cheryl Ingram is CEO of TDMC (The Digital Marketing Collective). TDMC is one of South Africa’s leading e-commerce and performance marketing agencies, with offices in Durban and Cape Town. With over 20 years’ experience in digital marketing, Ingram has helped numerous businesses achieve sustainable growth through innovative digital strategies. Here she shares her perspective on the key trends that are set to shape the industry in 2025. 
Cheryl Ingram is the founder and managing director of one of South Africa’s leading e-commerce development agencies, The Digital Media Collective (TDMC), with a client base of some of the country’s leading online retailers. As one of only four accredited Shopify Expert Partners in Southern Africa, the innovative Durban-based outfit is also a Google Expert Partner and Meta Business Partner – no mean feat for a company started at Cheryl’s dining room table nine years ago. A recent finalist of the Santam Women of the Future 2022 Awards, Cheryl is passionate about the power of mentorship, recognising and promoting raw talent and the influence that women can and do bring to the boardroom table.
The Media Online is the definitive online point of reference for South Africa’s media industry offering relevant, focused and topical news on the media sector. We deliver up-to-date industry insights, guest columns, case studies, content from local and global contributors, news, views and interviews on a daily basis as well as providing an online home for The Media magazine’s content, which is posted on a monthly basis.
Editor: Glenda Nevill
nevillg@themediaonline.co.za
Sales and Advertising:
Tarin-Lee Watts
wattst@arena.africa
Download our rate card
TimesLIVE
Sunday Times
Sowetan
Business Day
Wanted Online
SA Home Owner
Business Media MAGS
Arena Events
Copyright © 2015 – 2026 The Media Online. All rights reserved. Part of Arena Holdings (Pty) Ltd
Login to your account below
Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.
Copyright © 2015 – 2026 The Media Online. All rights reserved. Part of Arena Holdings (Pty) Ltd
