Jumia Egypt - Afrikan Heroes

Jumia Adds Food-Delivery Service in Egypt

February 7, 2021

Africa’s first unicorn, Jumia Technologies AG is rolling out its restaurant-delivery service in Egypt, making the country the tenth where it offers the capability. According to the company’s chief executive in Egypt, Hesham Safwat, the ecommerce company focused on Africa is planning to launch the service during the first quarter with hundreds of participating restaurants. It will face competition to win over consumers and restaurant operators from similar offerings in the market, which include the Talabat and Elmenus platforms.

It could be recalled that Uber Technologies Inc. ceased offering its Eats delivery service in Egypt in May 2020, even though it still offers rides in the country. Analysts say that Jumia hopes to tap into that yawning opportunity left by Uber Eats.

“We believe the market has a huge potential and is still at its early stage,” Mr. Safwat said in an interview, referencing demand for restaurant and food delivery in the North African country. Jumia’s restaurant-food business allows consumers to use a dedicated app to get meals from restaurants delivered to them. Many restaurants use Jumia’s logistics service to execute deliveries, the company said in an annual report for 2019. Currently, the food service is available in nine other markets in Africa where Jumia has operations, including Nigeria and Ghana. The food app also facilitates orders from grocery stores, according to a description of it.

At the launch of the service in Egypt, South Africa will be the only country Jumia is active in where it doesn’t offer food delivery. The company doesn’t have immediate plans to launch there, a spokesman said. In developed markets, demand for food delivery has grown during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has curtailed the ability of restaurants to seat consumers in indoor dining rooms. Meanwhile, Jumia plans to add technical and development staff this year in Egypt, expanding an office in Cairo from around 20 people to possibly around 100, Mr. Safwat said. Those developers would work on adding features to Jumia’s payments unit, he said.

Jumia has been pushing to show it can generate profits, in part by focusing its main digital marketplace on more everyday products, including consumer goods and health items. The company is also trying to expand beyond some of the urban centers in the countries where it is active, including in Egypt. In December, Jumia and Egypt’s postal service struck an agreement that allows Jumia to create pick-up locations for orders at locations in rural areas, according to Mr. Safwat.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Jumia Launches New Technology Center in Egypt

February 5, 2021

Jumia, leading e-commerce platform in Africa’s leading e-commerce platform which is built around marketplace such as Jumia Logistics, and JumiaPay aims at helping millions of consumers and sellers to connect and transact is embarking on a new technology centre in Egypt. Inspired by Egypt’s leadership in the field of information and communications technology as a result of its well-trained cadres, Jumia has announced that the Egyptian market has been chosen officially to host a technology center to be the new Jumia technology center in Africa to provide its services to the Egyptian market as well as Africa at large. The center was pre-launched last year for a test and postponed due to the COVID pandemic.

Jumia’s marketplace helps millions of consumers and sellers to connect and transact. Jumia Logistics enables the delivery of millions of packages through our network of local partners. JumiaPay facilitates the payments of online transactions for Jumia’s ecosystem. With over 1 billion people and 500 million internet users in Africa, Jumia believes that e-commerce is making people’s lives easier by helping them shop and pay for millions of products at the best prices wherever they live. E-commerce is also creating new opportunities for SMEs to grow, and job opportunities for a new generation to thrive.

Egyptian market is unique to this new position, which is a true reflection of what Jumia Egypt is doing to grow its business and also providing job opportunities for youth in new fields required by the local and regional markets. Jumia is keen on adapting the use of technology and benefiting from the well-trained human competencies to provide unprecedented services in the market and the other surrounding markets which is why Jumia Egypt was the preferred center for providing such services, as recently Egypt became a destination for financial technology.

The tech center aims to adapt technology to be available for all users as a contribution to achieve Egypt’s Vision 2030. The new technology center is considered as a reflection of Egypt’s efforts to provide digital competencies in order to benefit locally and globally to create additional income for the country’s public treasury. In addition to enhancing Egypt’s position in the information technology field to be among the largest exporting countries of digital services, and providing job opportunities for youth by qualifying them to practice freelance digital jobs.

Eng. Hesham Safwat, CEO of Jumia Egypt, affirmed that the “Egyptian efforts are the main reason for this announcement.” He pointed out that “From the first day of laying the foundation of the technology center, Jumia has established Egypt as a center for launching and entrepreneurship in the electronic payment and digital technology fields in Africa. Therefore, expertise will be shared among the rest of the surrounding countries, in addition to electronic payment methods that customers can use easily, conveniently and safely, as Jumia works side by side with the vision and direction of the Egyptian state that maximize the importance of digital transformation and financial inclusion.”

Moreover, Cairo Technology Center employees are working on developing JumiaPay services and many other digital services, which helped provide job opportunities for Egyptian youth. The technology center reflects the importance of Egypt as a startup market in the field of e-commerce. In addition, Jumia provides dozens of training and employment opportunities for Egyptian youth , developers and engineers by enhancing their skills in the field of development and electronic payments. The center provides technical support through the new electronic payment services via JumiaPay and other digital services.

The center is working on establishing new payment methods and providing the best technological solutions to support digital transformation platforms. In addition to encouraging innovation, creativity and developing Egyptian skills to enhance its competitiveness at the global level and improving the quality of services. He also added that the economic reform processes by the Egyptian administration helped in adopting the system of digital transformation and financial inclusion, as Egypt comes in the lead because it has become the least expensive, and despite that there is a scarcity of cadres due to the migration.