How Emmanuel Okonofua is driving revenue and building trust in Africa’s Digital Economy

In Nigeria’s digital economy, trust isn’t claimed to be engineered. As inflation and rising data costs squeeze consumer spending, Collectiva CPO, Emmanuel Okonofua disclosed why bad user experience is silently draining millions from online retailers, how digitizing informal cooperative societies is unlocking formal credit, and why product design is ultimately a matter of business survival. In this exclusive interview with KENNETH ATHEKAME, Okonofua, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Collectiva and Lead Product Designer at South Digital, spoke on why bad UX drains retail revenue, how digitizing cooperative societies unlocks formal credit, and why trust must be engineered rather than claimed. Excerpts:

Online retail in Nigeria continues to expand despite high inflation and weaker consumer spending. What is driving this resilience?

Online shopping here is a practical necessity, not a luxury. If your local shop is out of stock, market prices have doubled, or getting there requires sitting in two hours of traffic, ordering online makes immediate practical sense. When budgets tighten, consumers do not stop buying online they shift what they buy and who they buy from.
Simultaneously, payment friction has dropped significantly. Instant bank transfers now settle within seconds, and smartphone penetration is high enough that almost anyone can complete a transaction on the spot. That single shift removed our largest historical transaction barrier.

Where do you see the largest untapped commercial opportunities? The biggest opportunity is not another consumer shopping app. It is business-to-business (B2B) trade wholesale, distribution, and procurement. That side of the economy still runs predominantly on phone calls and paper ledgers, yet the transaction volume moving through those channels dwarfs consumer retail.
“Marketing gets someone through the door, but product design determines whether they finish what they came to do and return next week.”

Tech startups invest heavily in acquisition but struggle with retention. How critical is product design to a digital business’s bottom line?

Design dictates whether a digital business survives. Marketing acquires the user, but everything that follows is product design. It determines whether a customer understands the screen, completes their purchase, and returns next week. A company can spend heavily on customer acquisition and still leak almost all of its revenue through poor user flows.
In our market, design must also respect hardware and network realities. Your customer is often using an entry-level device, managing high data costs, and navigating variable networks. If your app requires six complex steps for a single action, users leave not from a lack of intent, but because the operational friction is too high.

What are the most common UX mistakes Nigerian retailers make that directly drain revenue?

Working across multi-touchpoint commerce platforms like Samphes, where I led product design across web and mobile, reveals five primary revenue leaks:

Mandatory Account Creation: Forcing users to register before allowing them to check out causes immediate drop-off.

Hidden Delivery Costs: Concealing shipping fees until the final screen guarantees cart abandonment. Customers accept costs they expect; they reject surprises.

Missing Trust Signals: Omitting a physical address, direct phone line, or return policy triggers anxiety in customers who have previously encountered online fraud.

Western-Centric Checkouts: Copying card-first checkouts instead of optimizing for local payment preferences like instant bank transfers.

Slow Page Loads: Unoptimized images fail to load on lower-bandwidth networks, costing retailers sales before the product is even viewed.

Cart abandonment remains high across Africa. What immediate adjustments increase conversion rates?

Show total costs early, enable guest checkouts, offer instant bank transfer and cash-on-delivery options alongside cards, and keep phone numbers visible at payment.

Post-purchase communication is equally vital for customer loyalty. An abandoned cart is usually a user who got interrupted, so automated follow-ups work. For completed sales, proactive updates eliminate customer anxiety. Most businesses go quiet precisely when the customer wants reassurance.

Over half of Nigerian consumers reported experiencing financial fraud last year. How can design actively rebuild consumer confidence?

Trust is designed, not claimed. Writing “100% Secure” on a homepage achieves nothing. Trust is built through operational transparency: clear physical addresses, real-time receipts, explicit shipping tracking, zero hidden charges, and hassle-free refund policies. At Collectiva, this principle led us to route all funds directly into each cooperative’s own account with our licensed partner bank rather than holding them ourselves. Over ₦500 million has moved through the platform because every single naira remains visible to its owner at all times without requiring third-party approval.

The largest untapped demographic in digital commerce is not people who cannot buy online, but people who have the means to buy and abstain out of fear.

As CPO of Collectiva, how does digitizing cooperative societies deepen broader financial inclusion?

Cooperatives are the most overlooked financial institutions in Nigeria. Millions save and borrow through them monthly without ever dealing with a commercial bank. Their bottleneck was never trust; it was infrastructure running on paper ledgers.

Collectiva provides these societies with enterprise-grade software while funds remain securely within the formal banking system. Digitizing these records creates verified financial histories, unlocking formal credit lines for millions of individuals who remain invisible to traditional banks.

“AI will happily give you a highly polished version of the wrong solution. Deciding what to build remains the primary human challenge.”

How is AI transforming product creation, and where is its highest-leverage application locally?

AI shortens the path between an idea and user testing. User feedback analysis that once took a week can now be completed in an afternoon.

However, AI does not replace product judgment. It will give you a polished version of the wrong thing if your strategy is flawed. For local enterprises, the highest leverage lies in cost efficiency, specifically automated customer support operating natively in local languages at scale.

At South Digital, where I lead product design on global AI tools like Voiceflow and Consensus, it is clear that AI creates value when applied to operational friction, not when used as a gimmick.

How do visual development tools like Webflow and Framer alter startup economics?

They eliminate the slow, expensive handoff between designers and developers. For instance, when designing and deploying the digital presence for CEPREC a £3.5 million UKRI-funded Pan-African research program spanning 30+ international partner institutions including the University of Warwick and Chatham House handling end-to-end design and execution allowed us to launch a world-class platform in record time at a fraction of standard agency costs.

The caveat is that these tools remove manual labor, not strategic thinking. They simply allow you to build the wrong product much faster if your premise is wrong.

How do you convince skeptical executives that design directly impacts balance sheets?

Instead of arguing aesthetics, quantify friction: How many users abandon sign-up? What is the support cost for user confusion? What is our 30-day retention rate relative to acquisition spend? Put a currency figure on those leaks, redesign a single high-friction screen, and let the conversion metrics prove the return on investment.

When we redesigned the platform for Kólé, a construction management software operating in a traditionally paper-based sector, establishing immediate visual authority and structural clarity was what converted enterprise builders who were initially hesitant to trust software with their supply chains.

What key advice would you offer tech founders building in Africa today? Talk to real users before writing code. Founders frequently design for imaginary customers, spending 18 months discovering that person does not exist. A week of real conversations prevents a year of wasted capital.

Additionally, build in public. Sharing your development process validates market demand early, attracts talent, and builds an audience before launch.

Avoid blindly copying Western products without understanding local constraints. The founders who succeed are not those with the absolute best ideas, but those who stay closest to their users and are willing to adapt quickly.