Brands/Products
Seven Times Jumia Has Led the Way for e-Commerce In Africa
People now enjoy shopping on platforms that offer great deals from the comfort of their homes since the inception of e-commerce in Africa.
What used to be an exclusive preserve of residents of developed countries has now been made possible for people in Africa, in general, and Nigerians, in particular. The story of this luxury cannot be complete without acknowledging its key player, Jumia.
The popularity of Jumia has gone far beyond the shores of this continent and was rated by Amazon’s Alexa as the most visited e-commerce website in Nigeria. Jumia despite emerging from a German start-up incubator has now become deeply rooted in African soil.
Jumia, which is often referred to as Amazon or Alibaba of Africa, has raised the bar in the e-commerce market through its unique features and great feats. Some of which are:
Cash Payment on Delivery Policy: Jumia adapted its payment methods to match the preferences of African consumers. This policy, which is one of the key drivers for Jumia’s growth, allows customers to pay in cash to the delivery agent. It also serves to instil confidence in consumers, who are still wary of making online payments. This also helped to engender trust among sellers and buyers in the African market.
Delivery Solutions: One aspect Jumia has been an e-commerce enabler in its innovation in logistics. With logistics being one of the main challenges of e-commerce, Jumia, apart from having third-party logistics partners, created its own fleet of delivery trucks. This has helped the company overcome geographical limitations.
Stock Exchange: Jumia also led the way for e-commerce in Africa when it went public on the New Year Stock Exchange (NYSE) in April 2019 and raised $196 million in net proceeds.
It was also recently ranked among the fifty smartest companies in the world by MIT, a great achievement that has brought global recognition in the field of e-commerce not only to Nigeria but to Africa as a whole.
The employment rate in Africa: Asides servicing the needs of consumers and businesses, Jumia has created employment for many Africans. With over 5,000 employees, Jumia is generating employment in engineering, IT, online marketing and web development across Africa.
At this rate, it is obvious Jumia is going to contribute significantly towards the three million jobs expected from online marketplaces by 2025. Recently, it opened a tech hub in Egypt for the development of JumiaPay.
Fintech: Another unique move in Jumia’s business is the creation of JumiaPay, a third-party online payment solution that provides a safer, faster and more convenient online payment experience for its users. The platform, which is functional in six notable countries – Nigeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Morocco, and Kenya, has been expanded to offer its consumers an increasing range of relevant everyday services.
Jumia Mall: Jumia allows small and big brands, mostly OEMs with varieties of products and services to sell to showcase their products and services on the Jumia Mall. This has created opportunities for brands to reach a larger audience across the continent. This contributes immensely to SME growth on the continent, with a ripple impact on the African economy.
Black Friday Deals: Jumia is recorded to be the first e-commerce platform to record the highest sales during the recently concluded Black Friday sales. It was reported that over 100 million visitors were on the Jumia platform that day, with a record of one billion views. This is an unprecedented feat in the African e-commerce sector.
Jumia since its inception has received a lot of notable awards of which the most recent is the e-Commerce Company of the Year 2019.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
An institutional investor, First Ally Capital, has strengthened a leading Nigerian financial technology company, Mathesis Analytics, to scale its proprietary credit decisioning infrastructure.
It made this possible by injecting fresh capital into the firm, which specialises in AI-powered credit decisioning infrastructure, an action that will directly support the growth and scaling of Mathesis’ core mission of providing the intelligence and infrastructure needed to bridge the credit gap for millions of unscored or underscored individuals across Nigeria.
With this investment, Mathesis will enable financial institutions to confidently assess and extend credit to borrowers who lack a formal credit history by leveraging an expanded pool of alternative behavioural and transactional data.
To date, Mathesis’ systems have supported more than 8 million loans for over 2 million unique borrowers in Nigeria, and the company is actively deploying its infrastructure to establish a growing pan-African footprint.
With the investment from First Ally Capital, Mathesis is well positioned to transform how the credit ecosystem operates, driving financial inclusion in partnership with lenders across the continent.
A significant barrier to credit access in Nigeria, which prides itself on being Africa’s largest economy, is data fragmentation. Borrowers frequently build positive financial behaviours across multiple digital platforms by repaying microfinance loans, saving through fintech wallets, or servicing Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) facilities.
However, under traditional credit infrastructure, these achievements remain invisible to new lenders.
Mathesis addresses this challenge through the concept of Personal Equity—the quantified expression of an individual’s financial behaviour aggregated across every institution with which they have transacted.
By translating these disparate signals into a precise, portable measure of creditworthiness, Mathesis creates a comprehensive credit identity that reflects the full breadth of a person’s financial life.
“True financial inclusion cannot be achieved in a vacuum; it requires structural collaboration in which lenders and fintech companies work as partners within the ecosystem.
“This investment from First Ally Capital validates our approach to reshaping credit infrastructure. By quantifying Personal Equity, we empower lenders to safely look beyond the constraints of formal credit histories and recognise a borrower’s true creditworthiness. This capital enables us to accelerate our pan-African expansion while maintaining the robust, institutional-grade infrastructure our partners rely on,” the chief executive of Mathesis Analytics, Winston Osuchukwu, stated.
On his part, the chief executive of First Ally Capital, Mr Ebenezer Olufowose, said, “At First Ally Capital, we pride ourselves on being a one-stop destination for financial solutions, offering a diverse portfolio of services ranging from investment banking and asset management to trusteeship, inclusive banking, and real estate.
“Our investment in Mathesis Analytics reflects our strong belief in the company’s vision and our commitment to supporting forward-thinking enterprises that deliver excellence.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The chief executive of Canal+ Africa, Mr David Mignot, has disclosed that MultiChoice is now fully integrated into the media group.
Mr Mignot disclosed this via a statement issued on Thursday, noting that this development marks a new phase in the evolution of one of Africa’s leading pay television operators.
He noted that the integration positions MultiChoice within a global media organisation with an extensive international footprint.
“MultiChoice is now a full subsidiary of a truly international media group operating in 70 countries. The group was founded in France, is listed in London and Johannesburg, and has a strong African presence with operations in more than 45 countries,” Mr Mignot said.
The statement underscores the scale of the combined business, highlighting Canal+’s global reach alongside its significant investments across Africa.
The completion of the transaction is expected to strengthen MultiChoice’s position in the African media and entertainment market by giving it access to the broader resources, expertise and international capabilities of the Canal+ Group, while reinforcing the group’s commitment to the continent.
MultiChoice operates across sub-Saharan Africa through platforms including DStv and GOtv, serving millions of subscribers with entertainment, sports and news content.
By Adedapo Adesanya
FoodCourt, a Nigerian cloud kitchen startup backed by Y Combinator, has suspended operations after months of unpaid salaries and mounting debts to vendors triggered a staff strike and forced the company to halt customer orders, according to a report by TechCabal.
The publication reported that customers first noticed on March 4 that they could no longer place orders through the FoodCourt app after the company disabled ordering as kitchen workers, delivery personnel and branch staff embarked on strike over unpaid wages. The company also owed outstanding payments to vendors.
By April 19, FoodCourt had temporarily shut its last operating branch after suspending activities across its Lagos and Abuja locations while seeking fresh funding and restructuring the business, according to the report.
The company’s chief executive, Mr Henry Nneji, said the decision to pause operations was not caused by a single issue but by a combination of operational, organisational and working-capital challenges.
“It’s important to clarify that the decision to pause operations wasn’t driven by one single issue. We reached a point where it became clear that continuing to patch those issues while operating wasn’t the right long-term decision,” he said.
“The objective is to build a stronger business than the one that existed before the suspension. We fully intend to bring FoodCourt back,” he added in an emailed response.
The company acknowledged outstanding obligations to employees, vendors, riders and service providers, but declined to disclose the number of affected workers or the total amount owed. It said efforts were underway to resolve the liabilities as part of its restructuring process.
It was also reported that the startup’s financial difficulties worsened after expansion into additional locations increased operating costs, while its cloud kitchen model came under pressure from rising labour, logistics, food and marketing expenses.
Despite the shutdown, Mr Nneji said FoodCourt intends to relaunch after completing its restructuring, adding that the company believes demand for its products remains strong.
Founded in 2021 by Henry Nneji and Paul Adokiye Iruene, FoodCourt operates cloud kitchens under multiple virtual restaurant brands through its consumer app. According to TechCabal, the startup had previously disclosed raising $1.7 million, delivering more than one million meals and reaching $4.3 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024.
