1. Background & Context.

E-commerce in Africa faces unique structural challenges compared to developed markets. Unlike regions with mature logistics networks and standardized addressing systems, African countries contend with:

• Unreliable road infrastructure - making rural access difficult.
• Informal addressing systems - complicating delivery accuracy.
• High costs of logistics - pushing up product prices and hurting margins.
• Customer skepticism - fueled by failed deliveries, and lack of trust in online payments.

These barriers made logistics the Achilles’ heel of scaling e-commerce in Africa.

How does Jumia Come to play?

Jumia, founded in 2012, with operations in over 10 African countries, including Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Côte d’Ivoire, understood early enough that its success would not come from just building a great online marketplace, but from solving the last-mile delivery problem. Today, Jumia Logistics is one of the continent’s most extensive delivery networks.

Jumia recognized that mastering last-mile delivery was not just logistics, it was growth strategy.

2. The Problem Definition.

SMEs and entrepreneurs face major barriers:

• High shipping costs due to lack of scale.
• Unreliable third-party couriers = delayed or lost packages.
• Limited national reach = small merchants couldn’t expand beyond their city.
• Customers distrusted online shopping due to missed deliveries or fraud.

This made it nearly impossible for entrepreneurs and small businesses to scale beyond local markets.

From my POV, I took Jumia’s core driving thought/force as: