Page 6 - LUA Sep - October 2022 for Magzter

COVER STORY

“Africa is only just starting down the centre. We employ the drivers, they own
digital commerce road. While there are the bike, and they deliver for us. The
some really progressive entrepreneurs, second operating model is where we
supported by solid national policy engage with an entrepreneur or somebody
frameworks (eg. Egypt), good telecom who wants to do logistics in Africa, in
coverage, and active delivery structures, a franchise model where they use our
out of the 55 African states, around half are technology, our SOPs, our processes, but
still only seeing eCommerce in the capital the team, the infrastructure, the capex, and
city,” says Tempest. the budget is theirs. The operating model
More recently a watershed e-commerce number three would be where we work
moment was when Jumia, the pan-African with certain large logistics companies like
e-commerce platform which is active across This collaboration the DHL’s, FedEx's and the UPS of the
11 countries in the continent since the last of Zipline and world, where we give them packages and
decade, witnessed 1.1 billion visitors on the they distribute them over their network.”
website in 2021 and has on board more than Jumia is one of the Among other encouraging
100,000 active sellers and saw 34 million many things we developments that have been creating
orders being placed on its platform and 8 are doing to grow ripples in the e-commerce logistics
million active consumers in 2021. landscape of Africa is the much-awaited
Apoorva Kumar, EVP Jumia, Group e-commerce and entry of US behemoth and world’s largest
Chief Operating Officer, told the logistics in every e-commerce platform Amazon which
publication, “The market opportunity and is now turning its focus on the African
growth potential in Africa for e-commerce nook and corner of continent as it looks for new consumers.
is huge as e-commerce is very under- Africa. Amazon is reportedly preparing to launch
penetrated right now. In terms of cost its South Africa marketplace around
and in terms of difficulties, it is extremely APOORVA KUMAR February 2023.
JUMIA
challenging to operate. Logistics is a big Further, South African retail and
entry barrier in Africa. However, our wholesale group Massmart has also recently
logistics solutions and operating models are currently extremely limited for consumers. announced that it had reached an in-
very unique and very focused on African Jumia’s logistics network includes principle agreement with American retail
geography and African consumers.” over 600 logistics partners ranging giant Walmart to acquire all the remaining
He adds, “We work with local 3PL from individual entrepreneurs to large ordinary shares in Massmart. Walmart had
partners and have hundreds of them in companies and it has more than 3,000 acquired a 51% stake in the publicly-listed
Nigeria, where we have a very strong pickup pick-up stations and drop-off locations Massmart for $2.5 billion in May 2011.
station network. In some countries, we use to facilitate deliveries for its sellers and Interestingly Massmart had announced
a lot of bicycles to deliver and roller skates consumers and this logistics services its intentions to enter the e-commerce
in some of them. So the logistics models arm is also open to third parties.
are extremely, focused on the local situation Kumar explains the various
and have been tailor-made for that.” models it employs to serve Africa,
As per numbers shared by Jumia, “The operating model number
27% of deliveries in 2021 were made in one is where we own the delivery
remote areas where choices of products are

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