Africa's E-Commerce Giants

Jumia has been crowned the king of online shopping sites in Africa, according to Statista’s report ‘The rise of e-commerce across Africa’, with the number of monthly visitors hitting around 32 million in April 2021. The South African e-commerce platform Takealot.com followed in second place with an average of 10.5 million monthly visits, while the online retailer Souq, now amazon.eg, registered 10 million visitors per month.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘Amazon of Africa’, Jumia was first launched in Kenya back in 2012, and has grown steadily ever since, now operating in Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Uganda. Much like the multicorp Amazon, it sells pretty much everything, from groceries to clothes, and has also launched its own food delivery service Jumia Food and hostel booking service, Jumia Travel. In its latest earnings report, the company revealed that it had a revenue of $47.6 million in the first three months of 2022, which is a 44 percent rise from the same quarter last year. According to Quartz, this growth has been driven by both its push to sell ‘everyday objects’, as well as the adoption of Jumia Pay, its online payment service.

According to Statista’s Digital Market Outlook, the potential for companies’ growth in Africa is huge, as the continent’s e-commerce users are forecast to surpass the half billion mark by 2025. This is partly thanks to rapid growth of internet penetration and continued digital transformation on the continent.