Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Connect with us

E-Business

Jumia Food Exit Shows Folly of Not Following Konga Strategy

Published

on

Kindly share this post

The recent announcement of Jumia Food’s exit from Nigeria, its biggest market, has set alarm bells ringing among industry watchers. Dr. Fred Bongani, a former employee and founding staff, examines the fallouts from this latest misadventure

E-Commerce, despite its potential as a goldmine, remains one of the most challenging business sectors in Nigeria and indeed, the African continent.

The obstacles that lie in the path of businesses intent on cracking e-commerce on the continent are well-documented, among which infrastructural deficiencies, logistical hiccups, skepticism for online shopping and predilection for offline retail, slow adoption of digital payment, among others, figure prominently.

Nevertheless, Africa is widely regarded by experts as the next frontier for bullish e-commerce growth.

Compelling insights from recent research by the International Trade Administration (ITA) shows that Africa represents a smart gamble for interested investors looking to reap the benefits of the wave of growth in e-commerce on the continent. Titled – The Rise of eCommerce in Africa – the study bets on the exponential boost in mobile technology that is expected to jumpstart e-commerce from its current middling status to a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the coming years.

“The logic of growth on this area is pretty much based on technology jumps that do occur within Africa because of historically missing economic infrastructure, such as banks, telecom landlines, etc. Africa is forecast to surpass half a billion ecommerce users by 2025, which will have shown a steady 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of online consumers for the market,’’ the study boldly asserts.

Specifically, the research shows that Africa currently leads the world in mobile device web traffic generation, with 69% of its total web traffic consisting of mobile internet users as of 2021. Further, the continent is forecast to be almost exclusively mobile-based market by 2040.

Continuing, the study notes that: ‘‘Compared to other regions, as of 2021 the African continent leads mobile internet usage a full 13% above the global average, and almost 5% more mobile usage than Asian region markets. This should indicate a “mobile-first” approach to any business looking to sell online to the various African markets.’’

The foregoing is backed up by a 2017 Accenture Digital Consumer Survey which discovered that in countries such as South Africa, smartphone acquisition increased from 52% in 2016 and 63% in 2017. Some of the more technologically advanced nations like Kenya and Nigeria boast a smartphone uptake of more than 44% and 30% respectively. Across the continent, the number of smartphone users saw a nearly two-fold increase, reaching more than 226 million. This spike in smartphone penetration, the survey submits, is steering a digital revolution on the continent, exposing users to the endless opportunities the internet provides, top of which is e-commerce.

Considering these lofty assumptions, it therefore came as a huge shock when Jumia, a multinational African-focused e-commerce company disclosed that it will shut down Jumia Food, its food delivery business in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Uganda, and Algeria by the end of 2023 in a new round of cost-cutting.

Jumia CEO, Francis Dufay told Reuters that the food delivery segment has challenging unit economics and big losses, while also attributing the closure of Jumia Food to increasing competition and unsustainable cost of operations.

“There is downward pressure on the commissions that we make and upward pressure on marketing costs because everyone is fighting for customers,’’ Dufay had stated.

The Jumia Food debacle represents another signpost in a seeming never-ending list of missteps and abrupt exits by the management of Jumia since it set up shop in Africa. This includes the offloading of Jumia Travel, its hotel and flight services vertical in 2019 to a rival brand, Travelstart – a move which came a few weeks after the shutdown of its eCommerce businesses in Tanzania and Cameroon and laying off staff in Kenya. Founded as Jovago in 2013, the hotels and flights marketplace became Jumia Travel after it rebranded in 2016. Earlier in 2017, the company had sold off Jumia House, its real estate subsidiary to ToLet.com.ng, a property startup, after it failed to scale.

To start with, Jumia is a German-headquartered e-commerce platform, with its technology and product team based in Porto, Portugal, and until recently, its senior leadership operated out of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Yet, it lays ambitious claims to becoming the African Amazon – a faulty dynamic worsened by a damaging identity crisis and the importation of business principles and strategies fit for the Western world and which the management expected to succeed in Africa, a developing continent with its myriad of teething challenges. Indeed, several critics regard Jumia as an exploitative Western company that conveniently co-opted an African identity to extract as much value as possible and profit off the continent.

As one of the founding employees of Jumia, I had expressed reservations at the ease with which the early-stage founders of the company had been eased out of the business. Every business has its DNA which symbolizes the very essence, cornerstone or soul of the establishment. This ideal is often reposed with the visionaries of the business and consolidated over time as the business scales. In the case of Jumia, what we had was a wannabe e-commerce behemoth with a major identity crisis. This foundational ambiguity would prove to be one of the catalysts that hurt the business in the long run.

At the height of the Jumia-Konga battle for the dominance of the Nigerian e-commerce sector when both brands launched in 2012, one thing was discernible: Jumia was often quick to arrogantly ridicule or thumb its nose at any innovation or strategy pioneered by a rival brand, even if it was a masterstroke, although the lessons of history showed that it may eventually ape the strategy when it realizes there is a market advantage therein. Those early days of e-commerce, particularly in Nigeria where I was based at the time, was one full of hype and little substance as both giants embarked on a battle of attrition for the leadership position in Africa’s biggest market. It took the coming of Yudala which was founded by a fresh-faced varsity graduate and backed by Nigeria’s biggest technology group to make both rival brands sit up and become more intentional about the substance of their hyped-up efforts (more on this later).

In early 2014, Konga pioneered the marketplace structure that is now a major staple of e-commerce on the continent. In its usual fashion, the management of Jumia derided it as a DOA (dead on arrival) strategy. However, it soon ate its words after advice from some of us in the business who saw how Konga was already stealing a march on us. Five months later, specifically in July 2014, Jumia followed suit with its own marketplace.

Then came the entry of Yudala – a landmark development that shook up the e-commerce market in Nigeria. Led by Prince Nnamdi Ekeh who was 22 at the time and just fresh out of school, Yudala pioneered the composite e-commerce model with the fusion of online and offline – a futuristic piece of innovation that has now been adopted by other global players. Yudala’s emergence was a refreshing relief to the chokehold of Jumia and Konga. The brand, though big on hype as its older rivals, matched its words with true substance.

In addition to rolling out eye-catching fuchsia-pink retail stores across major cities in Nigeria, Yudala took on big projects which expanded the scope of the industry. One of these remarkable milestones was the first ever drone delivery in the e-commerce world – a feat which was achieved in 2015 and which predated any other similar efforts.

When in 2018, the management of Zinox, the technology conglomerate backing Yudala, acquired Konga from its previous owners, Naspers and AB Kinnevik, it was obvious to all interested parties that this was a development worth keeping an eye on. In my own capacity, I had also advised the management of Jumia, especially considering the renowned capacity and decades of experience and success at the disposal of the new owners of Konga, to keep tabs on their strategy and follow suit or even explore partnerships, if that would guarantee a path to profitability.

The dust had barely settled on the monumental news of the acquisition when the management of Zinox announced an operational merger between Yudala and Konga. Although I had departed Nigeria, I followed with keen interest how the new owners subsequently rebranded the new entity that emerged from this operational merger, slowly transforming it into a dominant e-commerce force.

It is important here to state that while Jumia decided to double down on its poorly conceived pan-African expansion and an ill-advised IPO founded on shady figures and cooked books, Konga chose to continue consolidating its growing dominance in Nigeria:

  • KongaPay was repositioned and recalibrated, leading to its rating by Statista in 2021 as the leading provider of digital payment services for e-commerce transactions in Nigeria.
  • In 2019, the brand added Konga Travel to its list of growing subsidiaries. A technology-driven, revolutionary online travel booking agency, the new entrant gained prominence and market relevance within a short period of time.
  • From Kxpress, the management of Konga relaunched its delivery arm to Konga Logistics, expanding its fleet of vehicular assets and by extension, its capacity to not only handle Konga’s last mile deliveries but also cater to external customers.
  • Konga Health, a digital health care distribution subsidiary joined the fray in June 2021. Today, the brand boasts exclusive distribution agreements with global brands such as L’Oreal and Livful, among others.
  • Konga embarked on an expansion of its retail outlets and the set-up of massive warehousing facilities in regions across Nigeria, including what is arguably the biggest warehousing structure in Lagos located at Lekki

Amid all these major strides by its major rival, Jumia endured an embarrassing exposure of its IPO as a worthless sham by the popular US-based short-seller Citron, with its share price, which once traded as high as $60, now going for less than $4 today. The stubborn insistence of management in not borrowing a leaf from the Konga copybook has also seen Jumia continuously lose ground in Nigeria and in other less buoyant African markets.

The current exit of Jumia Food leaves a sour taste in the mouth, particularly for those of us who number among ex-employees of this once-grand e-commerce pioneer. In addition to remaining unprofitable over the years, Jumia is still shipping huge losses, as high as $19 million in Q3 2023.

With its share price tumbling down by the day and investors now potentially hedging their bets on the brand, how much longer can Jumia keep its head floating above murky waters in Nigeria before calling it a day for its remaining core physical goods delivery segment and struggling payment service, Jumia Pay?

The jury is out on that.

 


Kindly share this post

Ugo Onwuaso is an ICT enthusiast. He believes technology should be used for general good. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the Lagos state University. Dear Reader, Your support matters. But we believe that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. That is why, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and finance and how they affect lives. Our incisive and analytical view of how technology news affects the daily life help individuals and organizations make up their minds. Quality journalism costs money. Today, we're asking that you support us to do more. Kindly support our effort to deliver technology and finance journalism to everyone in the world. Donate as little as N1,000. Bank transfers can be made to: UBA Plc 1017156876 Communication Week Media Ltd

E-Business

Survey Reveals Marketing Leaders See Strong Potential in gTLDS Despite Knowledge Gap

Published

on

Kindly share this post

A new global survey from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) reveals that 52% of marketing leaders believe generic top-level domains (gTLDs – the three characters or more that come after the dot in a URL) have strong potential for enhancing brand presence online; however, a knowledge gap is preventing many brands from taking advantage of the opportunities that a gTLD can bring.

The research surveyed over 2,000 marketing leaders across eight countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, U.K., and U.S.) with the purpose of creating a picture of the evolving digital marketing landscape and understanding the levels of awareness around gTLDs.

It comes as ICANN prepares to open the next application window for new gTLDs in April 2026 the New gTLD Program: Next Round – the first opportunity in more than a decade for organizations to apply to operate their own gTLD.

Top-level domains are the letters found at the end of an Internet address (with gTLDs including .charity, .menu, .paris and .ceo). Brands can apply to run their own gTLD as a way to indicate the purpose of their organization or to clearly mark a website as being related to their brand.

The research shows that increasing brand awareness and visibility is the top priority for marketing leaders (54%) and that over half believe that gTLDs have strong potential for enhancing brand presence online.

However, the research also shows that almost a third (32%) of marketing leaders surveyed are unfamiliar with gTLDs, which suggests that operating a new gTLD may be a strategic opportunity that many organizations are currently overlooking.

Key findings from the research include:

  • After defining a gTLD, 92% of marketing leaders responded that they could see the potential benefits to gTLDs, with enhanced brand differentiation (46%), improved customer trust (45%), better control over online presence (44%), and improved SEO (44%) topping the list.
  • 19% of marketing leaders work for organizations that have previously applied for a gTLD.
  • Cost concerns (31%), knowledge gaps (27%), and insufficient resources (24%) were identified as the main barriers to application.
  • The research revealed notable regional variations, with Nigerian (74%) and Indian (61%) marketing leaders showing the strongest belief in gTLDs’ potential for branding and online presence. In contrast, marketers in China expressed more mixed views, with 50% seeing strong potential but 49% considering gTLDs an unnecessary investment with unclear Return On Investment.

The findings come at a time when marketing leaders are facing significant challenges in standing out from competitors (53%), attracting and engaging the right audience (52%), and keeping pace with digital trends (47%).

A new gTLD can be an innovative tool for commerce and communication. They allow businesses in specific countries, sectors, or niche markets to create an exclusive, descriptive, and memorable label on the Internet.

An entity operating a gTLD can provide its users and customers with an extra measure of confidence in its security and legitimacy online. This can be valuable in today’s environment, where users often don’t know whether they can trust the source on the Internet.

Theresa Swinehart, SVP, Global Domains & Strategy said: “The New gTLD Program: Next Round presents an opportunity for businesses, communities, governments, and others to apply to operate their own secure space online, tailored to fit their organization, community, culture, language, and customer interests.

Now is also the moment for brands to consider applying for a gTLD, and this research tells us there is still a lack of awareness. ICANN can help provide information and raise awareness of the Next Round and the opportunity it presents for global communities, organizations, and businesses, including brands.”

To help address the knowledge gap, ICANN is developing resources to help organizations understand the application process and potential opportunities for gTLDs ahead of the 2026 application window. ICANN also offers the Applicant Support Program (ASP), which provides financial and non-financial assistance to eligible applicants.

 


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

Firm Reports a 48% Increase in Malicious Packages Threatening Software Supply Chains

Published

on

Kindly share this post

Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) experts at the 10th annual Cyber Security Weekend – META 2025 held recently, talked about supply chain attacks and reported that by the end of 2024 a total of 14,000 malicious packages were found in open-source projects, a 48% increase compared to the end of 2023. 42 million versions of open-source packages have been examined by Kaspersky throughout 2024 in search for vulnerabilities.

Open-source is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. Popular open-source packages include GoMod, Maven, NuGet, npm, PyPI, and others.

These are tools that power countless applications and help developers easily find, install, and manage pre-built code libraries, making it simpler to build software by reusing code others have written. Attackers take advantage of the popularity of these and other packages.

In March 2025, the Lazarus Group was reported to have deployed several malicious npm packages, which were downloaded multiple times before removal. These packages contained malware to steal credentials, cryptocurrency wallet data, and deploy backdoors, targeting developers’ systems across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The attack leveraged GitHub repositories for added legitimacy, highlighting the group’s sophisticated supply chain tactics. Kaspersky’s GReAT also found other npm packages related to this attack. Malicious npm packages could have been integrated into web development, cryptocurrency platforms, and enterprise software, risking widespread data theft and financial losses.

In 2024, a sophisticated backdoor was discovered in XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, a widely used compression library in Linux distributions. Inserted by a trusted contributor, the malicious code targeted SSH servers, enabling remote command execution and threatening countless systems globally.

Detected before widespread exploitation due to performance anomalies, the incident highlighted the dangers of supply chain attacks. XZ Utils is integral to operating systems, cloud servers, and IoT devices, making its compromise a threat to critical infrastructure and enterprise networks.

In 2024, Kaspersky’s GReAT discovered that attackers uploaded malicious Python packages like chatgpt-python and chatgpt-wrapper to PyPI, mimicking legitimate tools for interacting with ChatGPT APIs.

These packages, designed to steal credentials and deploy backdoors, capitalised on the popularity of AI development to trick developers into downloading them. These packages could have been used in AI development, chatbot integrations, and data analytics platforms, endangering sensitive AI workflows and user data.

“Open-source software is the backbone of many modern solutions, but its openness is being weaponised. The 50% rise in malicious packages by the end of 2024 shows attackers are actively embedding sophisticated backdoors and data stealers in popular packages, which millions rely on.

“Without rigorous vetting and real-time monitoring, a single compromised package can trigger a global breach. Organisations need to secure the supply chain before the next XZ Utils-level attack succeeds,” comments Dmitry Galov, Head of Research Center for Russia and CIS at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

NDPC Probes Suspected Data Breach in Examination Centres

Published

on

Data Breach
Kindly share this post

Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has launched an investigation into allegations that the confidentiality and integrity of candidates’ personal data may have been compromised by hackers.

NDPC Probes Suspected Data Breach in Examination Centres

The Commission initiated the inquiry following concerns over possible data breaches during examinations.

Preliminary findings indicate that several examination centres may not have implemented adequate technical and organizational measures to safeguard candidates’ personal information, as required under data protection regulations.

Although the incident reportedly affected 379, 997 candidates, the NDPC’s investigation is poised to cover a systemic audit of data processing and third parties.

It will be recalled that JAMB recently admitted that a technical error on its platform affected a total of 379,997 candidates in 157 examination centres across Lagos and the South-East.

Further investigation led to the arrest of at least 20 suspects who are currently in the custody of the Department of State Services and the Nigerian Police Force.

 

 

 


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Trending