Data portal maps income across African cities

Fernridge Consulting, a pan-African research and consulting firm, has launched AfricaEye, an online portal that provides registered users with demographic and expenditure data by area for South Africa and selected African cities.

Underpinned by Fernridge Consulting’s 10-year track record and methodologies based on geographic information systems (GIS), AfricaEye’s visual interface displays the market potential of a user-defined area, together with competitor and complimentary information, and the number of households by income group.

‚”With AfricaEye, any individual or institution around the world now has access to affordable, industry-tested, reliable, granular household income and retail expenditure data to improve planning and map their market potential and African expansion more accurately,‚” says Sybrand Strauss, Managing Director of Fernridge Consulting.

AfricaEye was developed to make Fernridge Consulting’s existing datasets available in an automated and user friendly manner to a broader market. Fernridge have also invested heavily in its own data generation capacity and 65 African cities outside South Africa are now mapped by individual dwelling.

With data currently available for cities across South Africa and major cities in Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana and Uganda, AfricaEye provides granular information and map displays that drill down into the specific demographics of any area as selected by the user. Improvements in mapping technology and bandwidth capacity mean that the data can now be made available in a more cost-effective manner.

The AfricaEye dataset makes use of aerial photography, property research, demographic data, global positioning system (GPS) fieldwork and industry-tested consulting experience and methods.

‚”For many individuals and organisations, the cost to access this type of data is prohibitive,‚” says Strauss. ‚”With AfricaEye we are now able to provide on-demand access to data that was previously only available to large retailers and property developers information like micro-area household income and retail potential to anyone globally who needs this kind of data for sub-Saharan Africa.‚”

Fernridge’s methodology and approach displays each data point as a dwelling on the AfricaEye data platform, with households classified in terms of ‚”type of dwelling‚” and ‚”household income‚”. The income ranges are derived from up-to-date property values. AfricaEye takes into account the dwelling type, size, age and area as lifestyle indicators. The methodology takes into account living standards of areas comparative to each other, incorporating fluctuations in the property market by means of the affordability of dwellings.

‚”We believe our market knowledge and 10-year relationship with customers such as The Spar Group and McDonald’s is proof of the value of this type of information, as we are able to provide our customers with analysis, such as accurately predicting sales forecasts for new stores that open within our regional footprint,‚” concludes Strauss.

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