E-Commerce in Africa: What's Working and What's Next
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Walk into any tech hub from Yaba to Westlands and you will hear founders chasing the same dream.
Build the Amazon of Africa.
For a decade that dream burned a lot of capital and broke a lot of hearts. The story now is calmer, and far more interesting. E-commerce on this continent is finally finding the shape that fits it, and that shape looks nothing like the Silicon Valley template we kept copying.
Let me walk you through what is actually working, where the real money is moving, the honest problems still in our way, and what I think you should build next.
The market is real, and the number people quote is wrong
First, let us get our facts straight, because bad numbers have misled too many founders.
Africa's e-commerce market is projected to reach roughly $40 billion in 2025 and grow to about $56 billion by 2029 (Statista, 2025). McKinsey put the figure for the continent's largest economies at around $75 billion by 2025 (McKinsey, 2013). Both are real, both are big, and both tell you the same thing: this is a market measured in tens of billions and climbing at a steady clip.
The proof is already in our pockets. M-Pesa moved 37.15 billion transactions in the financial year to March 2025, up nearly 30 percent year on year (Safaricom FY2025 Annual Report). Back in 2010 the IMF noted that M-Pesa was already processing more payments inside Kenya than Western Union did across the entire world. That payments rail is the floor that African e-commerce stands on.
So the demand is here. The question worth your time is which models capture it.
B2C survived by getting boring, in the best way
For years the headline name was Jumia, and for years the headline was losses.
The turn is happening. Jumia posted 25 percent revenue growth in Q3 2025 to $45.6 million, grew physical-goods orders 34 percent year on year, and now guides toward profitability on a pre-tax basis by 2027 (Jumia FY2025 filings). The company got there by doing unglamorous things well: leaning on its own logistics, pushing into upcountry towns, and trimming the cash-burning city promotions.
That is the lesson for consumer commerce. The winners stopped trying to out-spend customers into loyalty and started solving the dull, expensive problems of getting a parcel to a person who lives off a road with no name.
Contrast that with Copia Global, once celebrated as the model for serving rural Kenyan shoppers. Copia entered administration and was liquidated in 2024, laying off more than a thousand staff. A brilliant mission and a real customer base were not enough to outrun unit economics that never closed. Hold that story close. In African retail, the margin math is the strategy.
The quiet giant is B2B, wiring up the informal shop
Here is the part the consumer headlines miss.
The largest retail channel on this continent is the duka, the kiosk, the spaza, the neighbourhood shop run by one family. Roughly 90 percent of African businesses are MSMEs, and they buy their stock through chaotic, cash-heavy supply chains. Digitising that flow is the real prize.
The clearest example is the MaxAB-Wasoko merger, completed in 2024, which created the continent's largest B2B retail network with more than 450,000 merchants across Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Rwanda and Tanzania (TechCrunch, 2024). What I find instructive is how they are reaching profitability: the core ordering business is already profitable in three of their five markets, and they are layering fintech and embedded credit on top of the order data they already collect.
In Nigeria, Omniretail and TradeDepot are running similar plays, financing inventory for retailers who never qualified for a bank loan. This is the structural shift. The opportunity is to become the rails, the credit, and the software underneath the millions of small traders who already serve them.
Cross-border is the next frontier, and the rules are finally arriving
Now look up from the single country.
Informal cross-border trade in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at $10 billion to $24 billion a year, with figures around $17.6 billion commonly cited (OECD). That trade is mostly women, mostly cash, mostly invisible to any platform. It is a giant addressable market hiding in plain sight.
The policy plumbing is starting to catch up. In February 2025 the African Union adopted eight annexes to the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, covering digital identity, cross-border payments, data flows and consumer trust (African Union, 2025). Paired with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, the dream of a Lagos seller invoicing a Nairobi buyer in local currency, settled in minutes, is moving from slogan to spec.
I will be honest about the friction. Ratification is slow, logistics across borders remain expensive and unreliable, and a parcel that crosses three customs posts can lose its margin at every gate. The builders who crack regional fulfilment and trustworthy cross-border payments will own the decade.
What this means for builders
So where should you point your energy?
Build the rails underneath the storefront. The defensible companies in African commerce sit underneath the transaction: payments, logistics, working-capital credit, and the software that informal traders run their day on. Safaricom got rich owning M-Pesa, the layer everyone else has to use.
Make the unit economics your first slide. Copia proved that a loved brand with real customers still dies if every order loses money. Before you scale, know your contribution margin per delivery cold, in the towns where it is hardest.
Sell to the merchant before the consumer. The duka owner is a repeat, high-frequency, data-rich customer who will pay for tools that grow their shop. That is a far steadier business than chasing one-off retail buyers with discounts.
And design for the border now, even if you launch in one city. The AfCFTA digital rails are being laid this year. The founders who build with cross-border payments and fulfilment in mind from day one will be ready when the gates open, while everyone else is still re-architecting.
The era of copying Amazon is over, and good riddance. The next great African commerce companies will look like our markets actually look: mobile-first, merchant-led, credit-hungry, and built to cross borders. That is a far harder thing to build, and a far better one to own.
Go build it.
Further reading
Over to you: If you were starting an African commerce company today, would you build the storefront or the rails underneath it? Tell me why in the comments.
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