Jumia Shrinks And Rethinks In Slow March Towards Elusive Profit

Francis Dufay recalls the moment he took over Jumia in late 2022 and found a company many had written off. “This company was as good as dead,” he later admitted. The numbers backed him up. Once hailed as “Africa’s Amazon,” Jumia’s stock had cratered more than 95% from its 2021 peak, falling below USD 2.00 a share as investors concluded e-commerce on the continent was a money pit.

Fifteen months later, Jumia is mounting an unlikely comeback. In December 2025, Jumia opened a new office in Yiwu, China’s sprawling wholesale capital where merchants pack shipping containers with everything from electronics to artificial flowers. The move formalised a quiet but aggressive supply-chain pivot into simply letting Chinese sellers list on its marketplace, Jumia now sources directly from manufacturers, compressing costs and bypassing middlemen.

In its Q4 2025 results released this week, items sold from international sellers—overwhelmingly China-based—surged 82% year-on-year. By September, Jumia counted roughly 24,000 China-based sellers on its platform, with 2.2 million China-sourced items sitting in its African warehouses. The company now claims its products are frequently 60% to 70% cheaper than equivalent listings from Temu, the fast-growing Chinese discount platform that has aggressively targeted African consumers.

“We can actually fight against those platforms in our markets,” Dufay told analysts this week. Jumia’s localised model offering cash-on-delivery, pickup stations in secondary towns, and customer support in local languages, has helped.

Now, its strategy is explicitly tailored for the mass market. It has dropped premium brands and everyday groceries in favour of affordable electronics, fashion, and home goods sourced directly from Yiwu. Momentum is building as Nigeria, its largest market, delivered 50% GMV growth in Q4, with orders up 33%. More tellingly, 61% of orders now come from “upcountry”—secondary cities and rural areas where competitors’ delivery networks barely reach.

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Jumia’s Q4 2025 results show a company in transition. Revenue jumped 34% year-on-year to USD 61.4 M, while gross profit rose 43%. Adjusted EBITDA loss nearly halved to USD 7.3 M, and cash burn slowed dramatically. A positive working capital contribution of USD 9.6 M—essentially, Jumia collecting cash from customers before paying its own suppliers—suggests growing leverage over its vendor base.

Yet investors remain skeptical. Shares dropped more than 12% on the results, with analysts noting the company missed its own full-year guidance on orders and GMV. Jumia now targets adjusted EBITDA breakeven in Q4 2026, a timeline some consider optimistic given the volatility of its operating currencies and the continued weight of its legacy cost structure.

This week, Jumia exited Algeria, its third market retreat in two years after South Africa and Tunisia. Algeria contributed just 2% of GMV, and its rigid import controls and cash-heavy economy offered little path to profitability. Similar considerations have also seen Jumia drop everyday grocery items and food delivery while cutting headcount in recent years.

The contraction leaves Jumia operating in eight countries—down from 11—with Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt now the clear priorities. The company’s leaders insist the era of “expansion-at-all-costs” is over. What remains is a leaner, more focused operator betting that direct access to Chinese supply chains, combined with on-the-ground infrastructure its global rivals cannot quickly replicate, will carry it to its first-ever profit.

The irony is not lost on industry observers. Jumia, once dismissed as a failed Western transplant, is surviving Africa’s e-commerce shakeout by borrowing from the very Chinese playbook that was supposed to bury it.