Africa’s best-known e-commerce company has spent a decade proving that selling online on the continent is hard. Its management says profitability is close. It has said that before.

Jumia listed in New York in 2019 as “the Amazon of Africa”, a label its founders never chose and its results never justified. Under the current leadership the strategy has been subtraction: exit marginal countries, cut the loss-making food delivery business, focus on a shorter list of markets and on goods that people actually buy online — phones, appliances, fashion.

The structural obstacles

• Logistics. Addresses are unreliable, roads are poor, and last-mile delivery costs more than the margin on many items.
• Payments. Cash on delivery remains common, which means returns and cash handling.
• Purchasing power. The basket size that makes e-commerce work is out of reach for most households.
• Competition from social commerce. A seller with a WhatsApp catalogue and a motorcycle has lower costs than a platform.

The Central African blind spot

Jumia’s footprint in CEMAC has been limited. That is the local angle: is Central Africa simply too small and too fragmented for platform e-commerce, or is nobody trying properly? Cameroon has two large cities, a young population and growing mobile money penetration. It also has customs procedures that make cross-border parcels slow and expensive.

The verdict to seek

The profile should test management’s claims against filings: revenue per order, gross profit after fulfilment, cash burn and the path to break-even. And it should ask the harder question: if the platform model does not work, what does? The answer may be logistics-as-a-service for the thousands of small merchants who already sell on social media.