VenturesNow

Jumia ends food delivery chain in Nigeria, 6 other African countries

Published

5 months ago

December 15, 2023

Pan-African e-commerce platform, Jumia, has announced plans to end its food delivery business, Jumia Food, in Nigeria and seven other African countries by the end of the year.

Jumia stated that the move was required following a careful analysis that showed the food delivery industry was not viable given the state of the economy and market conditions in the nations where it operated. Employees of Jumia Food will move to support the successful physical goods operations in the impacted nations.

The six other countries that would be impacted are Ivory Coast, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Algeria, the company said in a statement.

“Following a strategic review of Jumia Food, the Company determined that its food delivery business is not suitable to the current operating environment and macroeconomic conditions in its market, and will close its food delivery operations in all markets by the end of December 2023,” the statement reads.

“This decision aligns with the Company’s strategy to optimise its capital and resource allocation and to continue its path to profitability.

“The food delivery business represents approximately 11% of Jumia’s Gross Merchandise value (GMV) for the nine months ended September 30, 2023, and has not been profitable since the inception of the business.”

Jumia’s CEO, Francis Dufay, stated that the company was realising more and more that there was enormous potential for growth and a path to profitability the more it concentrated on the physical goods business.

“We must take the right decision and fully focus our management, our teams, and our capital resources to go after this opportunity,” Dufay said.

“In the current context, it means leaving a business line, which we believe does not offer the same upside potential—food delivery.”

Recently, Nigeria has suffered the exit of high-profile firms amidst rising operating costs. Perennially, Nigeria’s underdeveloped power sector is a bottleneck to broad-based economic development and forces most businesses to generate a significant portion of their electricity. The forex market instability, and cost of production hike have massively impacted businesses as well.

VenturesNow

Nigeria wants managers for proposed $10 billion diaspora fund

Published

4 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A tender paper shows that Nigeria is looking for fund managers for a $10 billion diaspora fund to bring in dollars and foreign investment for the economy.

The fund wants to pool the billions of dollars that its people send back to the country every month so that they can be used for local investments in things like healthcare, education, and infrastructure.

The World Bank says that Nigeria got more than $20 billion in payments from people living outside of Nigeria last year.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade in Nigeria said in a public post that it was looking for “fund managers for the development and establishment of a multisectoral, multilateral private sector-led investment fund to form the $10 billion Nigeria Diaspora Fund.”

The tender paper said that the fund manager’s job is to plan and set up the fund’s legal, operational, financial, and administrative structures.

The investment is intended to last for three to five years, and then more money will be put in after that. The government said the fund would last for 10 years and could be used for an extra two years.

The trade ministry’s tender said that people who want to run the fund must have done business in Nigeria in the last five years and must have a track record of raising money and running big, profitable venture capital funds.

Anglo-American turned down BHP Group’s $39 billion takeover offer on Friday, saying it was way too low for the London-listed company and its future.

In a statement, Minister of Industry and Trade Doris Anite said that it was a “once-in-a-lifetime chance for our citizens in the diaspora to drive Nigeria’s economic growth.”

The naira is under pressure because of a lack of foreign currency because of lower crude oil exports. This has led companies and people to buy dollars on the black market.

Nigeria is going to issue migrant bonds later this year to bring in even more foreign currency.

VenturesNow

World Bank grants Malawi $57.6 million for food crisis

Published

24 hours ago

April 27, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

As a response to its food crisis, the World Bank said on Friday that it would give Malawi $57.6 million in “quick release” grants.

“This support comes in the context of the severe food crisis the country is suffering due to El Niño conditions in the wider southern Africa region,” the World Bank said in a statement.

“A series of intense disaster events over the last few years has left almost no time for the country to recover and has resulted in a severe erosion of food security at the national level.”

Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world. It is ranked 170 out of 187 countries in the 2010 Human Development Index. Almost 16 million people live there, and 90% of them make less than $2 a day. That’s 53% of the total population.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that 46,000 children in Malawi are seriously malnourished. In 2023, UNICEF said that more than 500,000 Malawian children were at risk of not getting enough food.

Now, Malawi has a lot of programs in place to deal with things like poverty, and climate change, and to make the business and agriculture more diverse.