Jumia shut down its Cameroon operations this morning, firing its entire staff, no public announcement, no special word from the group or its CEO. The brutality of the news to the staff echoes their management style and is, I believe, one of the reasons for its demise.
I watched this company from inception. When a young lady, newly arrived from France, was sent to start the Cameroon ops for Africa Internet Holdings, a @RocketBerlin subsidiary. I was introduced to her and of course knew Rocket. I was excited that they chose to come to Cameroon.
She was super young, and this was her first trip to Cameroon and really her first real job. She was very dynamic and I wanted to help. I offered her the use of my conference room at @AppsTech free of charge to help launch the company.
The first to launch was Kaymu, one of Rocket’s international brands. The team was hired and started working with the young lady in our offices. One of the group managers, also French also came. He was in charge of finance and admin for the region.
Eventually, they outgrew our offices. They first moved to @ActivSpaces which is just one floor down. I thought it would be great for our startups to sit side by side with these execution giants, as Rocket was reputed to be.
It was just a few months but already staff was treated with such disrespect. I remember of people fired for very petty stuff and They were ruthless. On the white board in the morning, the goals for signing up sellers. Every noon and end of day, staff had to give progress reports.
I admired their ability to stick to a plan but it also showed their total inflexibility in adapting to the market. The staff (all contractors because they weren’t allowed to hire), would come back with feedback from the field. No one cared. No adjustments would be made.
Eventually they also outgrew @ActivSpaces and moved to a large adjoining open space. Their regional admin head, another French guy, explained that they couldn’t sign any contract over 6 months because Paris HQ wanted the flexibility to shut down quickly if numbers not met.
Managers succeeded each other one after the other. I stopped to keep track of their names. With only a couple exceptions, the managers all came from France. Some were outstanding. Most were lost.
It became clearer to me that the now rebranded Jumia wasn’t at all interested in a long term business. They were interested in just a few KPIs that would look good to investors or possible acquirers. The pressure to make those numbers is same as what caused fraud in Nigeria.
I never once saw anyone from Nigeria involved in any capacity in my dealings with Jumia. It was either a local manager (usually French) or Paris. The one time a Cameroonian was sent to negotiate was to ask to reduce their rent. He said they were having difficulty making payroll.
The same day, TechCrunch had reported raising $326 million from Goldman Sachs and others. So squeeze local suppliers and employees while raising hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a portion of the email I sent to them on March 7, 2016 
Many of their staff members would complain primarily about the lack of consideration for their feedback. For instance Jumia Home didn’t account for agent commissions and therefore agents were hostile to the solution. The site was full of fake merchandise. This went on and on.
I am one of those that believes that, if it wants to be successful, a company has to have good relationships with its community and all stakeholders, not just its shareholders. Jumia has been opposite of that.
The Samwer bothers stamped their corporate culture on Jumia and you can sense its disdain for staff, customers and suppliers in everything it does.
‘No developers in Africa,’ their CEO said. ‘Africa has no retail.’
‘No developers in Africa,’ their CEO said. ‘Africa has no retail.’
Beyond #JumiaIsNotAfrican, $JMIA is simply a badly run business that is incapable of understanding its market, refuses to act as a good corporate citizen, and thinks Africans are simply a commodity, a means to an end. No business with that attitude can succeed in the long term.
Jumia refuses to report earnings by country, or by line of business. If any savvy reporter or investor required that info, the illusion of a 14 (now 13) country African e-commerce giant would quickly dissipate. The only thing giant about Jumia is their funding and their ego.
