This week, Jumia announced that it is shutting down its operations in Rwanda, reducing its business to 11 countries.
This came shortly after Jumia’s withdrawal from Tanzania and Cameron. Co-CEO Sacha Poignonnec claims that this is just normal (“routine”) adjustment.
The company is pushing hard its fintech platform JumiaPay, however, it faces a lot of competition, especially from Chinese or Chinese backed players.
Jumia had a hard time focusing in the past – a natural by product of its scale. However, with weak infrastructure in most of the countries it operates in, achieving meaningful scale has not been easy for Jumia.
Whether it can convince investors of its ability to focus is still a question mark.
We wrote about people shorting Jumia’s stocks about half a year ago.
Now with Jumia’s share price at almost 1/10 of its peak, some friends are still shorting:
