‘How eCommerce sub-sector can grow, impact Nigeria’s economy’

For Nigeria’s electronic commerce (eCommerce) sub-sector to grow, become profitable, and subsequently impact the economy, more education is required.

This should be supported by various government’s policies and infrastructure development.

These were some of the advice given by the immediate past Chief Executive Officer, Jumia Nigeria, Mrs. Juliet Anammah, who has been elevated as the Chairwoman, Jumia Nigeria.

In an interaction with journalists in Lagos, yesterday, Anammah said logistics was also very key to sustaining the growth of the sub-sector.

While appreciating the efforts of government in creating an enabling environment for businesses to survive in the country, Anammah, noted that eCommerce is just growing in this part of the world, “so, there must be collaboration among all stakeholders, including government and consumers on how to make it more competitive like in other climes.”

Meanwhile, Anammah insisted that the firm is doing very well in the country despite a tough environment in 2019.

Sustaining the growth in 2020, the firm said it will focus more on customers and vendors in order to drive business sustainability and profitability, which is designed in such a way to further strengthen the Nigerian e-commerce business.

As part of the 2020 drive, Anammah’s new role will see her oversee Jumia operations across its African markets, while Massimiliano Spalazzi becomes the new CEO for Jumia Nigeria.

However, Jumia co-Founder and Co-CEO, Jeremy Hodara on the 2020 agenda for the Nigerian market, said: “There are huge opportunities for e-commerce business in Nigeria. We see faster expansion of e-commerce in Nigeria than other parts of the world.

“E-commerce is solving everyday life challenges for people such as the inconvenience of going out for shopping. Jumia is in business and we will do everything to make the business sustainable and profitable for Jumia and its customers.

“In all of these, I see competition driving the e-commerce business in Nigeria and we welcome competition, which will spur us into improving the market the more,” Hodara added.

From his perspective, Spalazzi, said: “We will focus on our over 10,000 vendor partners in Nigeria to strengthen their relationship with consumers and offer them value added services that will make them further grow their business. We will be offering them different packages that will enable them understand their business better and to gain more visibility on the platform.

“We pride ourselves as the custodian of happiness for our customers, and we will in 2020, empower our vendors to make more customers happy on our e-commerce platform.”

Spalazzi said another area of focus would be to give consumers access to purchase online, through the JumiaPay, thereby increasing the purchasing power of customers and saving their precious time while shopping.

“We will keep offering the widest choice of products and digital services to our customers, and serve all our customers across the country in a most unique and interesting way that will delight our customers,” Spalazzi said.

According to him, Jumia would continue to empower entrepreneurs and onboard and grow customers’ businesses on the Jumia platform. In the area of logistics, he said the e-Merchant will continue to work with and grow best logistics companies in the county, in addition to offering training that would boost growth opportunities.

Giving details on how Jumia intends to promote a cashless economy with JumiaPay in 2020, Hodara said: “We will focus more on Jumia pay in 2020 to drive cashless transactions on our e-commence platform. We have discovered that most payment apps are not very successful in signing on billions of users, but it is our focus for 2020 to ensure we highlight the benefits of JumiaPay, and encourage more people to transact with JumiaPay. There are some payment apps that are used in different regions of the world that are doing very well, signing on billions of users on a daily basis, and that is what we want to replicate in Nigeria with JumiaPay.”