Probably the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic are leading ecommerce players in respective major markets, where ecommerce is fast, and probably permanently, increasing their share of the total retail.

Even in the relatively mature market of US, Amazon has seen sales surge by 40% in the most recent quarter (Q2 2020):

Shopify, which allows companies to build their own ecommerce without going through platforms like Amazon, also surged:

China’s Pinduoduo is still leaping, despite the geopolitical tensions:

Southeast Asia’s SEA Group and Latin America’s MercadoLibre are also benefiting:

And people must believe that each regional champion is worth betting on. So Jumia’s price went up too, by quite a bit: 

However, while long term prospects of ecommerce in Africa is simply optimistic, we believe that for Jumia to be at the same level as Shopee or MercadoLibre, it still has years to go. Africa’s infrastructure is a big issue, so is the group’s localisation strategy.

Worth reviewing some of the earlier articles on this subject:

Jumia: rebalancing or retreat?

Jumia vs. Citron Research – who is lying?

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Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].