Jumea is the largest e-commerce company operating in Africa and is sometimes called Africa's Amazon. It also, very recently,

in mid-April of 2019, launched an IPO, an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange,

meaning they started selling common stock to anyone who wanted to buy it. A big step for any

company, and a rarity for the NYSC, at least, for a company

that operates primarily in 14 African countries. This operating range would typically limit

their exposure to larger, more-moneyed international markets, but that launch pad has been enough

to gain them unicorn status, a billion dollars or more in IPO valuation,

which is still a quite rare thing in any region. Interestingly, although Jumia is often considered to be

an African company and even promotes itself at times as an African company, it was actually

incorporated in Germany by two French founders. Their IPO

documents tallied their accounting numbers in US dollars and euros, not in any one of the many

African currencies that they accept, and although the company has done many smart, regionally focused

things, like hiring most of the company's employees somewhere in Africa,

primarily Nigeria, and accepting mobile money payments, which is a big deal in a region where

most people do not have debit or credit cards. There's still the question of whether this

kerfuffle over origin and implied cultural branding will prove to be more than just an early day's talking point,

after which they'll continue to scale and grow and do business as usual.

Then again, business as usual for Jumia isn't actually profitable, despite what their solid

performance pre- and post-IPO might imply.

Jumia's sales increased by 40% in 2018, reaching about $147.3 million in sales, but the company has

losses totaling around $1 billion, which have been accumulating since their founding in 2012.

On top of that, Jumia is attempting to, more or less, build out an

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