Best Selling Cars Blog: The Africa Project

Street scene in Djenne, Mali. Picture by Leonid Plotkin, all rights reserved. 

* Click on the title for the direct links to 47 African countries covered on BSCB! *

This Africa Project update is brought to you by online car insurance from Auto Insurance.

A few months ago, I launched the Africa Project on Best Selling Blog to try and bring African countries to a similar level of data and car sales information as the rest of the world. I want to thank you all for contributing to the Africa Project to date, with notably a monthly coverage resumed for Algeria thanks to Mermou, Historical information for Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) between 1958 and 1980 thanks to Frank and exclusive models and brands ranking for Kenya thanks to Myk plus a look at how Hyundai is ahead of Toyota in 5 major African countries including South Africa.

The BMW Cheetah was a rebadged Glas 1700 assembled in Rhodesia in the sixties.

But there is still a lot of work to do and many countries to explore, so I encourage you to keep contributing to The Africa Project by sending/shairing any piece of information you have, even if it’s just observations you have made when you visited various African countries. Once/if BSCB gets bigger, I may have the possibility to travel to these regions to report about them myself, but for now my own experience of Africa is very limited.

If you live in Africa or have data on any African country please be sure to get in touch by filling the ‘Contact us’ form I will contact you right away.

There is a revitalised interest towards Africa in France right now.

In terms of new car sales Africa is the last frontier, with only a few countries having set up regular reports. However no less than 1.4 million cars were sold on the African continent in 2011, and even though it is still plagued with war and poverty in some parts, it is now developing fast. The African Bank of Development predicts 4.5% economic growth for the region in 2012 and 4.8% in 2013, with peaks at 6.9% in Western Africa and 5.6% in the East.

Indeed, one of the things I noticed during my last stay in France is the revitalised interest, focus and introspection towards the African continent, with which France has long running cultural and economical links. French rap band Sexion d’Assaut recently released the song ‘African’ (the video clip shot in Senegal is above), a harsh, realistic and at times humorous view on how Africans are perceived in France and abroad. In the car world, this renewed interest translates into statements like Peugeot’s, refocusing its energy on sub-Saharan Africa in 2012.

On top of this, Japanese carmakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda have had decades of strong sales in the region, and lately Chinese manufacturers have landed en masse, making Africa a fascinating continent to follow, and this is why I want to make it a special focus on Best Selling Cars Blog.

The Dacia Lodgy is assembled in Tangier, Morocco.

Problem is, new car sales reporting is still quite disorganised and I only have data for a few countries. South Africa, by far the biggest African car market at 570,000 sales in 2011, Algeria (#2 at 300,000) and Egypt (#3 at 176,000) are the only 3 I am able to cover monthly. There are still a lot of unknowns…

So this is where you come in dear readers.

If you work in the car industry anywhere in Africa, within organisations that would have the potential to bring together some car sales data, or if you just happen to have sales info, please do get in touch by filling in the ‘Contact us’ form.

I would like to build Best Selling Cars Blog towards the site that gives reliable sales data for as many African countries as possible so everyone can have a better understanding of this fascinating and fast evolving market, so I’m counting on you BSCB readers to improve the coverage on Africa! Many thanks in advance for all your help.

See the direct links to the 47 African posts below.