Jumia Slashes Staff To 2,000, Bets on AI to Turn Its Business Profitable

Jumia is betting on artificial intelligence to solve a problem it has struggled with for years: turning its fast-growing e-commerce platform into a profitable business.

Despite rising order volumes and dominance across several African markets, the company has remained loss-making since its launch in 2012. High logistics costs, inconsistent demand across regions, expensive customer acquisition, and a history of operational missteps have all weighed on its margins.

Multiple restructuring rounds, including the shutdown of Jumia Food and significant layoffs in 2022, 2023, and 2024, have not been enough to deliver the financial stability investors have long expected.

Against this backdrop, Jumia is now leaning heavily on AI as the centerpiece of its turnaround strategy. The company recently cut 7% of its workforce, reducing headcount to just over 2,000 employees, and says the reductions are tied directly to an accelerated push to automate customer service, marketing, technology operations, and other internal workflows. The move signals a shift from traditional restructuring to a deeper reinvention of how the company operates.

To begin with, Jumia’s AI adoption started in 2024 with simple plug-and-play tools aimed at eliminating repetitive work. Those early gains laid the foundation for broader integration.

The company formalized AI governance—setting policies for data access, oversight, and responsible use—and shifted from isolated scripts to embedded systems powering logistics, engineering, finance, HR, and compliance. Jumia now says AI-driven workflows are contributing materially to lower operating expenses and improved scalability.

These latest cuts are part of a much longer restructuring arc. Back in 2022, the company laid off more than 900 employees—approximately 20% of its staff—marking one of Africa’s largest tech downsizing events.

Further layoffs followed in 2023 and 2024, accompanied by exits from unprofitable verticals and markets. Despite these efforts, profitability remained out of reach, forcing Jumia to adopt more aggressive automation tools to reshape its cost base.

Financial Performance Improves as Cost Controls Kick In

Meanwhile, the financial results suggest that the strategy is gaining traction. In the third quarter of 2025, revenue rose 25% to USD 45.6 M, up from USD 36.4 M a year earlier.

Gross merchandise volume grew 21% to USD 197.2 M, and total orders increased 34% year-on-year. Nigeria, its biggest market, delivered a 30% jump in orders and a 43% surge in GMV, evidence of rising consumer trust and a more compelling value proposition.

At the same time, losses are narrowing. Operating loss fell 13% to USD 17.4 M in Q3 2025, while loss before income tax improved slightly to USD 17.7 M.

Cost-cutting is showing up across major expense lines: general and administrative costs dropped 7% to USD 17.6 M, and technology and content expenses fell 10% to USD 8.7 M, driven by headcount optimization and renegotiated contracts.

Jumia argues that AI is accelerating this efficiency push by reducing manual workloads and supporting a leaner overhead structure.

Consequently, investor confidence has swung sharply over the years. Jumia’s stock, which traded at about USD 10.29 in early 2022, fell to USD 3.40 by the end of that year and hit USD 2.31 in October 2023. After deeper restructuring, the share price rebounded to USD 13.07 by mid-2024 before settling around USD 10.56 in November 2025.

Optimistic Outlook

In parallel with automation, Jumia is expanding its logistics and marketplace infrastructure. The company is opening new warehouses in Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, and Côte d’Ivoire, while increasing partnerships with Chinese e-commerce sellers targeting African consumers.

Demand for fashion, electronics, and personal care products continues to strengthen across several of its core markets, reinforcing that growth remains central to its strategy despite aggressive cost reductions.

Looking ahead, CEO Francis Dufay says Jumia has reached an inflection point driven by stronger execution and rising customer demand.

The company maintains that it is on track to break even on a loss-before-income-tax basis in the fourth quarter of 2026 and deliver full-year profitability in 2027. Management emphasizes that AI will be central to achieving those milestones, not simply a supplementary tool.

Ultimately, Jumia is betting that automation, combined with disciplined spending and a growing customer base, will finally rewrite the economics of its business.

Whether that bet succeeds remains an open question, but the direction is clear: after more than a decade of losses, Jumia is turning to AI as the lever that could finally make its ambitious e-commerce model profitable at scale.