Airtime, Food, Rides, or Spa? What African Employees Actually Spend Rewards On

RewardsCard redemption patterns across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa reveal what employees really want — and it's not always what HR teams expect. We cover this in detail in Why Africa Needs Gifting Infrastructure, Not Another Gift Platform.

The most common question HR teams ask before launching a reward card programme is: will employees actually spend it on something meaningful? The short answer is yes — overwhelmingly. But the more interesting question is what they spend it on. The patterns across African markets reveal something important about what employees actually value, beyond what survey responses suggest.

Nigeria: Connectivity Drives Everything

In Nigeria, airtime and data are the single most redeemed category — often accounting for 30–40% of all redemptions. This surprises some HR leaders who assume food or entertainment would top the list, but it makes complete sense when you understand the Nigerian context.

Connectivity is foundational to daily life in Lagos and Abuja. People burn through data quickly — WhatsApp, streaming, banking apps, navigation. The cost of staying connected is a real, recurring pain. A reward that relieves that pain is experienced as immediately practical and genuinely valuable.

After airtime and data, food delivery and dining come second. Chowdeck, Glovo, and a cluster of restaurant chains see strong redemption. The third category is wellness — spa visits, especially among women in professional roles, are a consistent top-three redemption choice.

Kenya: Safaricom First, Then Experiences

Kenya's pattern looks different. Safaricom products — airtime, data bundles, M-Pesa services — are consistently first. The cultural and economic centrality of Safaricom in Kenyan daily life makes this unsurprising.

What's striking in Kenya is the strength of experiential redemptions as a second category. Java House, restaurant vouchers, and cinema credits perform strongly relative to market size. Nairobi has a vibrant dining-out culture, and RewardsCard recipients use their balance to access it in a way they describe as feeling like a "treat" rather than a normal expense.

Ghana: Balanced Spending Across Categories

Ghana shows the most balanced spread across categories of any market. MTN and Vodafone airtime are popular but don't dominate the way they do in Nigeria. Food, grocery, and retail categories each hold a meaningful share. This reflects a diversified consumer economy in Accra where employees have varied spending habits and preferences.

One interesting Ghana-specific trend: supermarket and grocery credit performs particularly well for card values above a certain threshold — suggesting that when the value is meaningful, employees use it to relieve household spending pressure rather than treat themselves.

South Africa: Premium Retail and Wellness

South Africa's redemption profile is the most upmarket of any market. Woolworths, Dischem, and wellness brands consistently top the redemption charts. South African employees are accustomed to high-quality retail and use reward cards to access brands they'd typically consider a splurge.

Telecom credit performs less strongly here than in West or East Africa — South African mobile spend is lower as a proportion of income, and data is more accessible. The reward sweet spot in South Africa is quality grocery and retail, not connectivity.

What This Means for HR Teams

These patterns have a direct implication for reward design: a one-size-fits-all reward catalogue doesn't match the reality of African markets. The categories that resonate in Lagos are different from those in Cape Town, which are different from Nairobi.

This is why localised catalogues matter. A reward card that shows a Nigerian employee brands they don't recognise, or a South African employee a telecom-heavy catalogue built for West Africa, underperforms. Country-specific catalogues with globally available brands layered on top is the architecture that gets 84% redemption rates within 72 hours.

The other takeaway: don't assume you know what your team wants before they've told you. Redemption data is the most honest signal available. Give your employees a RewardsCard, let them choose, and the data will tell you more about their actual preferences than any survey will.