Business
How African tech startups are powering the continent’s rapidly growing economies
“The vision of the institution is to create jobs and wealth locally here in Africa,” said its CEO Jorn Lyseggen.
When the right idea with the right backing meets a hungry market, a start-up can grow fast, as the experience of Nigerian online retailers Jumia shows.
Founded by two Nigerian Harvard Business School graduates, the business has benefited from Internet penetration in Nigeria of nearly 30 percent and a dearth of middle class retail outlets in the continent’s most populous nation.
Jumia is growing at 20 percent per month, orders have jumped from US$50-US$100 per day to millions of dollars per month and it plans to expand beyond Nigeria, said Sacha Poignonnec, Co-CEO of Africa Internet Holding, one of Jumia’s backer.
“The same way the mobile companies came in to leapfrog landlines, the same way mobile banking in East Africa is leapfrogging traditional banking, we see e-commerce as a way to leapfrog traditional brick and mortar retail here,” said Tunde Kehinde, one of Jumia’s founders.
