Founded in 2012 in Nigeria, JUMIA is a Marketplace created by AFRICA INTERNET GROUP, a Nigerian group owned by Milicom, MTN and the German giant Rocket Internet.
JUMIA experienced rapid growth, expanding its operations over twenty African countries and in several specialities in addition to its Generalist Marketplace: jumia food, jumia travel etc. This development was made possible by its ability to adapt to the habits and the realities of the African continent, where other companies have failed.
Indeed, the realities of African e-commerce are very different from those of Europe and most of the rest of the world. From the low literacy rate to the low banking rates due to a lack of confidence in the banking system, Jumia has been able to find ways to get around all these obstacles and it has progressively established the culture of online shopping in Africa.
So, the company is the online shopping leader in Africa. For example, in Ivory Coast at least 80% of the e-commerce traffic in 2017 was done on Jumia.ci.

Source: actualiteafrique.info
 
This domination is similar in almost all African countries where the company is present. Another Jumia’s strength is the financial capacity of its incubators. The firm managed to get 120 million € in 2014 and 326 million $ in 2016. This capacity is often lacking in most African startups.
However, a large financial capacity is not enough to succeed in the field of ICT in Africa, and the failure of the French giant CDISCOUNT after only two years on this continent proves it.
The success of the company and its expansion despite the reluctance of the majority of Africans to online transactions made JUMIA the “Amazon of Africa.”
Still far from the statistics of the world giants in this field, the company doubled its turnover in 2015 compared to 2014 to 134.6 million euros, but its net profit was negative with -111 million euros. The company is struggling to reach the break-even.
In any case, JUMIA has taken a big lead in the African market.
Maybe one day there will be a war on this continent between the “AMAZON OF AFRICA” and the “TRUE AMAZON”.