Africa’s construction sector is on the rise. According to research by Brookings, as of 2024, an estimated $812 billion worth of large construction projects were scheduled or underway across the continent, spanning housing, commercial real estate, healthcare infrastructure and transport projects.
Africa’s e-commerce sector is expanding rapidly as well. The continent is projected to have half a billion online shoppers, with digital commerce adding an estimated $180 billion to regional GDP, according to GSMA. Procurement in construction has not kept pace with either trend.
In Nigeria, research into the building industry has found that adoption of e-procurement tools among architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and contractors has remained slow, even where awareness of the technology exists, a pattern echoed across other African markets where supplier catalogues, RFQs (Request For Quotes) and technical specifications still move largely offline.
Someone building a house in Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg may still need to visit several supplier showrooms in person, none of which use common product standards or present information in the same format.
Hemal Doshi, founder of Eyby, has spent the past year building a marketplace to close that gap. “People are used to Amazon, but they’re buying consumer products,” he says. “We’re selling technical products, and there’s no marketplace for that. It’s highly fragmented, and we’re trying to create an Amazon specifically for the building and construction industry.”
