“Our mission is to use technology and the internet to connect people”- Jumia CEO

At the just concluded Financial Times Summit held in Lagos, the Chief Executive Officer of Jumia Nigeria, Juliet Anammah said the company’s mission was to use technology and the power of the internet to connect people and enable them to have access to buy products online.

She made the remark while speaking on how Nigerian companies can seize the opportunities presented by the rise of tech in Nigeria.

According to her, Jumia’s mission of providing a viable and sustainable platform for buying and selling of a wide assortment of products online is producing positive results as the company currently has over 10,000 vendors or sellers, over 5 million products listed on the platform, and millions of daily visits.

Although,  Anammah identified logistics (efficient delivery of products) among other things as the biggest challenge of eCommerce in Nigeria due to the infrastructure deficit in the country. Yet, she remained optimistic that despite these challenges, eCommerce will continue to thrive in Nigeria.

Her words: “Jumia is an eCommerce platform, and our role is to enable consumers to have access to buy products online. At the moment, we have over 10,000 vendors ranging from manufacturers to small & medium size businesses who have listed their products on Jumia. Today, we have over 5 million products available for sale on Jumia. You can buy everything, from a can of Coke to solar panels on Jumia. Basically our mission is to use technology and the power of the internet to be able to connect people, bridging knowledge that is typically asymmetrical in Africa.”

Speaking on the prospect for domestic investment in eCommerce in the country, Anammah said: “there are opportunities certainly in Nigeria. Jumia is in about 15 African countries, so those opportunities are just beyond Nigeria. For instance, Jumia as an ecosystem started with the basic eCommerce platform itself, so basically people can go online and shop. At the same time, the back end of that is logistics. A lot of infrastructure comes to play: people need to have tricycles to make final deliveries to customers, and vans to network from point A to point B. There are people who invest in systems that power the things we do online.”