E-commerce giant Jumia has reportedly shut down operations in Cameroun. The company, which is headquartered in Europe but sells as an African company with the influence Amazon has on the U.S., has been undergoing a series of troubles, which were magnified once it went public a couple of months ago.
The Cameroun operations are said to have been axed sometime on Monday (yesterday) after the company determined it could not remain afloat in the West African state.
Those close to the matter say Jumia fired its entire Cameroun workforce and did not make any public announcements about it, as is the case with organizations that restructure their operations by letting go of their staff. Even Jumia’s top brass have not addressed the press as of this writing in what has been termed as Jumia’s unorthodox management style that has seen the e-commerce company make a ton of missteps.
A brief statement from Jumia, however, says that based on its review, it has come to the conclusion that its transactional portal as it is run is not suitable to the current context of Cameroun.
It has been argued that many African e-commerce sites have been trying to replicate Amazon without examining market and customer requirements. This mistake has arguably been the biggest stumbling block to success.
Recently, Safaricom’s platform Masoko announced it was cutting ties with vendors, effectively making the recently launched e-commerce company a failure. Currently, the site sells phones and accessories and is not different from the old Safaricom Shop platform we used to know.
