₦airaland Forum

mrsage:
Value

they bring value
its d lies dt got dem.
& underpricing products, just to gain market share.
who does that?!
year after year after year?

when will the exploitation of Africa stop?

wen we sef go get sense?

A year after its much heralded debut on the New York Stock Exchange, e-commerce start-up Jumia has shut down in three African states, struggled to turn a profit and got dumped by its original owners, writes former BBC Africa Business editor Larry Madowo.
The two CEOs of Jumia announced earlier this month that they were taking a 25% pay cut to support the online retailer manage costs during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2019, the duo and the company's chief financial officer collectively earned $5.3m (£4.27m) in base salaries and one-time bonuses. But Jumia's losses rose 34% to $246m, the eighth straight year without profits.
A silver lining arrived with lockdowns that shut down much economic activity but led to a surge in online shopping. Before the rush, the African online retailer had ended last year with 6.1 million active consumers on its websites, up from 4 million previously.
Africa pride
As the virus spread, Jumia expanded grocery and sanitary offerings, introduced contactless delivery options and promoted cashless payments. It also started selling essential items in South Africa using its fashion retail subsidiary Zando's infrastructure.
The two Frenchmen who run Jumia as co-CEOs, Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, reduced their salaries just days before the first anniversary of its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
When it listed last April, Juliet Anammah walked up to the security check-in tent outside the world's most famous stock trading venue.
Another woman standing nearby snapped a photo of a large banner draped over the front of the iconic building emblazoned with the Jumia logo reading: "The 1st African tech start-up to be listed on the NYSE."
"I've worked on Wall Street for 25 years and I've never seen an African banner there," she told Ms Annamah, then the firm's country CEO in Nigeria.
Spectacular decline
Jumia is a three-headed online giant: a marketplace with one billion annual visits largely dominated by third-party sellers, a logistics arm that handles shipments and deliveries, and a payments platform.
Ms Anammah led her colleagues in ringing the bell above the trading floor of the stock exchange at exactly 09:30 on 12 April 2019.
"There was no champagne later to celebrate. We're still a start-up," she remembered recently at her office Lagos.
Jumia listed at $14.50 a share, valuing the company at $1.1bn. Just four days later, its stock hit $49.77, raising its value to an African startup record of $3.8bn.
It would not last. Within a few weeks, Jumia's stock suffered a spectacular decline, weighed down by allegations of fraud and concealed losses, a scathing report by a notorious short-seller, embarrassing fraud lawsuits in New York courts and a public relations disaster over its identity.
The share price sunk to an all-time low of $2.15 last August and has not budged.
The company exited three of its 14 country markets - Rwanda, Tanzania and Cameroon - in quick succession and tried to chart a path to profitability.
Tumultuous year
A week before its first birthday on the stock market, its original owner, German technology investor Rocket Internet, dumped its entire 11% stake, further knocking the wind out of Jumia's sails.
"Jumia's first year on the NYSE is a proper reflection of the value of the company," says Rebecca Enonchong, a Cameroonian tech entrepreneur and a critic of the firm.
"The hubris of the IPO has led way to the reality of a bad business model. The stock price, hovering under $3, is a reflection of that."
Jumia's IPO was billed as a coming of age story for the continent's nascent start-ups, but it arrived on Wall Street just as the market's patience for unprofitable unicorns started wearing out.
The American e-commerce giant Amazon, to which it is often compared, took six years to become profitable, but eight years after its launch, Jumia is still struggling.
'Impossible to work'
That bad news capped a tumultuous year for the company, praised and derided as "the Amazon of Africa".
"Their business is still fundamentally broken, they have no way out," says Olumide Olusanya, an early competitor of Jumia's in Lagos.
The entrepreneur, who went into business after quitting his job as a doctor, thinks it is burning too much cash too fast in a low-margin market.
"It is practically impossible to work. I don't envy the guy running the business."
You may also be interested in:
Tunisia deploys police robot on lockdown patrol
Why motorbike apps are scrambling for Africa
Why African millennials can't get enough of Bitcoin
In 2019, Jumia's fulfilment expenses were $1.6m higher than gross profit. That means Jumia paid more to ship and deliver to buyers than it earned.
Dr Olusanya suggests the main reason Jumia listed on the NYSE was to allow its investors to cash out.
"They collected money. After several years, you're thinking of how to return the money to them. If I had an outlet, I would also do the same," he says.
Mr Hodara scoffs at that, saying that the company needed to raise money.
"This is called capital markets for a reason," he responded in an interview in New York recently.
"It was the right time and the right place to list to bring the business to the next level, bring more visibility and give access to a new set of shareholders and investors," he added.
Identity row
But Jumia's public claim to African-ness is tenuous because its headquarters are in Berlin, Germany, its Technology and Product Team in Porto, Portugal, and its senior leadership in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Critics see it as an exploitative Western company that conveniently co-opted an African identity to extract as much value as possible and profit off the continent.
Mr Poignonnec, the co-CEO, ignited a major storm when he claimed in a post-listing interview on pay television station CNBC that Jumia's engineering team is based in Portugal because Africa lacks the talent.
"The reality is that in Africa there are not enough developers. We know that. And we need to collectively address that," he said last April.
And Mr Hodara, answering the now obligatory questions regarding its distributed workforce, says: "We have our tech team in Portugal because this is where we have a good set-up with hundreds and hundreds of developers all in one place so very practical because we're on the same time zone."
"We are one among many companies to have a few people in Dubai because of ease of travel. There is no African city that is as connected to the rest of Africa as Dubai," adds Mr Hodara.
Jumia's country leaders insist that it is an African company and the majority of its employees are in fact African.
"For me, it's about who was this company set up to serve?" says Ms Annamah, who is now chairwoman of Jumia Nigeria.
"It's completely African, look here, these are all Africans here," she says, pointing to the large open workspace outside her office.
But the leadership at country and group levels was mostly made up of Westerners, some of whom were completely new to Africa.
"The truth is that the people at the top are definitely not African in any shape or form," admits Akua Nyame-Mensah, a former managing director of Jumia Classifieds in Ghana and Nigeria.
"But that's not a bad thing. There are a lot of companies on the continent that are doing amazing things and have an impact that are not led by Africans."
She is now an executive coach and strategic adviser but still holds Jumia stock options.
'Put Africa on the map'
For Mr Hodara, a German base made sense because a European corporate structure could attract funding from investors more easily than an African one.
"What matters is where our consumers and sellers are," he says.
"Personally, I want the company to be here in 50, 100 years to continue to be part of the life of our consumers and sellers every day, make them successful and make more money. We want to build a lasting business."
However, Ms Enonchong does not see a profitable future for Jumia.
"Their real founders, that is Rocket Internet, don't see one either apparently, since they sold all their shares."
Dr Olusanya expresses a similar view, but credits it with making history in Africa's internet landscape.
"They put Africa on the map. Nobody ever thought that you could build a business in five to six years that could get listed on the NYSE," he says.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52439546

meobizy:
Yes.

omo

c answer.

I just taya

chai

a massive recession is coming.
if u see my topics, u c it's inevitable.
arik air just let go 90% of it's staff; mikano let go 600.
stock market crude oil, even agric have all crashed.
in 2016, tens of thousands lost their jobs; this will b much worse.
and d few (guys) who still work will have their pick (of women).
so, wot will u do if they lose their job?
break up, separate or stay?
wot if u still have urs?
or u BOTH lose jobs?!

SweetCunt97:
Until life happens

everyday wen u wake up, life happens anyway.

how do YOU choose to deal with it?

these are hopes and aspirations. I could've also said, "life screws with everything, so babe, ur on ur own o".
would u prefer dt kind of man?

emperorsversion:
I can imagine Pete edouche telling his wife these...
my dear wake up.. all those stuff na wash

a man who grew up in d colonial era is whom ur comparing urself with?!
amazing.
a female friend got married in December.
by march, she was planning to relocate, to sell her stock and recoup her investment.
according to her, d husband showed zero interest in her business- even tho it's his town & she'd run out of options.
as far as she's concerned, she's on her own.
lockdown is all dts holding her there.
if u lyk, do anyhow with ur wife.

Toluwashe778:
super nice write up....
I love ur choice of words
God bless u

I will never stop praying for a good man
I will wait till he come

tnx

akaahs:
LoL, bro I don't wanna believed U copy it from or just wrote about me. Actually this things I have already program with bae, we discussed most of them.
Nice work bro.

tnx

communication & romance

Zabiboy:
SMH!! fastest way to Doom.. If you know, you know

lol
so wen u marry, UR needs will come first?
lol

seun, lalasticlala, mynd44

do u have a neighbour who was treated and has recovered?

do u know d virus can be preserved for weeks in cold environments?

that means the food in their fridges likely holds live, active virus!

and these people will return home and start retransmission all over again?!

so, are u safe?
front page o, for everyone's good.
God help us all.

dis is a follow up to d thread below-
https://www.nairaland.com/5812390/personally-know-anyone-tested-positive

if people in ur neighborhood have tested positive, d following should have happened ON THE DAY results came thru:
- public alert to all residents in the surrounding area.
- fumigation of d household, street and associated places.
- contact tracing.
- distribution of face masks, sanitizers and guidance leaflets.

so, where in Lagos state has any of this happened?
or, will these RECOVERED PATIENTS go back to CONTAGIOUS homes?

hence d hashtag.
share for ur safety.

excuse me, house.
it seems @OperaNewsHubNG's 50mb data is blocking my apps and downloads.

at least with mtn, I can download and use apps, but on Airtel, d 50mb seems to prevent other apps from accessing d internet.
why is that?

I can only browse with my data subscription.
how do I disable their 50mb?
dis is urgent and important.
who else experiences dis?
kindly respond asap.
tnx

Phemysam19:
Hello boss in the house, pls I have a severe Malware battling with my 2nd hand PC and making my chrome browser which I often used to slow down when loading pages. It keeps saying WAITING FOR PAGE TO BE RESPONSIVE. I know that this was actually my fault for downloading antivirus( bytefence & avast) late. The two antivirus after detecting the Malware keeps asking me to purchase a pro version or a licence key for the Malware removal.
I have tried other solutions I found on net which is clearing browser history, but it didn't work.
Pls guide me on what else I can do. And if the Last resort is to download a paid antivirus, pls recommend an efficient and affordable one I can get.
Thanks.

The images are below.

go to task manager and close all chrome processes.

use a different browser, cos chrome hugs too much RAM.

I tot avast is free?
I use it with opera. import all bookmarks, etc from chrome

todto:
pls folks, I just noticed that my laptop usually turns off by itself and since yesterday it doesn't power until I plug it on power. And it stays dormant at 72% without going forward or backward. I am reallqy cofused. pls help

1. unplug and test battery. if it failed to boot up, its fully discharged. ur Lt myt have a calibration issue due to new software or updates.

2. remove d battery & charger, press power button for 1 min. plug and reboot, WITHOUT BATTERY.
go to device manager. look for battery in d right hand panel, usually at d top of d list.
expand by double clicking. if there r 2 or more items, uninstall them. it's ok, they'll b reinstalled automatically.

3. stunt down, reconnect battery and plug to charge.
check indicator, to ensure charging.
when full, unplug and reboot, to test battery.

if it immediately shuts down or fails to power up, ur ba3 is bad.

but Google ba3 sensor recalibration, it myt help.
goodluck

Donelli:
It's possible you're genuinely concerned, but it's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.

What do you mean when you say "...avoid the responsibility of looking after them"?
If there's anyone who is actually living up to responsibility, it is Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. He has awoken the consciousness of those who have hope of redemption. Which is what freedom is all about.

It is your mistake reasoning in a skewed fashion.

Again I say, you have no idea what you're talking about.

in an analogy above, I asked about a mother's responsibility to her children.
we'll continue after ur answers

Hoephase:
Look after them in what way?

That is the sole responsibility of the politians. Do you know how much the EU gave FG lately? How much help have you received from them?

Did the like of Kanu and Sowore received anything meant for the betterment of the citizens that they have refused to bring out?

how, after all I've written above, could u miss d point so completely?

Osagyefo98:
Tinubu apologist writing..

He has impoverished u all.

wot exactly is paining u in my write up?
is it hunger-20?
counter or keep quiet.

Hoephase:
I think you are muddling up issues. Tinubu and Buhari are politicians who were elected and paid for a specific task; which is to improve the lives of the masses.

So you can judge them based on the task given to them and if they made good of it.

The likes of Kanu and Sowore (I have to include Sowore) are not paid or elected by the people but they took it upon themselves to try and call the attention of those elected to what is important. Whether they succeed or if their methods are acceptable are discussion for another day.

Given the two different categorization I think you can see where the opinions of those that disagree with you emanate from.

umwant to rally people to a cause, but avoid d responsibility of looking after them- especially in matters directly related to ur cause?
isok

gidgiddy:
You are making a mistake. Buhari and Tinubu are the politicians who are telling you and everyone to give them power so they can make your life better.

Kanu on the other hand is not a politician. It is not Kanu's job to make anyones life better, Kanu's job is to fight for referendum so that his people can decide if they want to remain part of Nigeria or not.

everyonewho wields influence over others has a duty to do d best for them NOW, whatever d long term goals may be.
nevertheless, assuming ur correct, riddle me this-

a woman says her husband is wicked, heartless and miserly.
she's determined to divorce him so she can give her children d home training they need.
but till then, she leaves them to their misbehavior, as they learn from d dominant source of influence-
d said wicked, heartless and miserly man.
tell me, after her very long divorce of several years (after all, he has money, power and influence and decided to frustrate her efforts), what kinds of children will she end up with?
what would u call such a woman?

even worse, wot will her children call her?

maybe dis is wot we shld start asking dem:
oga go, how many cancer patients u heal last week?
which hospital bin dey treat dem, make we go check?
time for the "proof of d pudding".

SciLab:
There are two rogues on your list swallowing your commonwealth and don't really care about you.

Remove Kanu from that list of criminals.

Criticizing Tinubu, Buhari and kanu in the same vein, so you can be seen as 'objective' will not work. We know Kanu is your primary target for discredition.

it would have been nice if u had argued against d points I raised, instead of ur paranoia.
he still has an opportunity to direct his followers properly, especially since good governance takes a lot of practice and Biafra must practice it, or perish.
abi, what stops him from directing them to hold their LGA officials to account?

DEATH OF A NATION

this needs to go out now:
I have bad news And good news.
hmmm
the bad news-

Nigeria is dying.
picture your house on fire, with your children inside-
that's how this message should be treated by you. and think about it- our nation is burning and our children ARE inside!

it's my fault. I've known this for over 5 years.
it's all our faults. to some degree, we all knew...
this nation was sick in 2015, but went into a coma with the 2016 recession. the government placed her on a life support system through borrowing from whomever they could.
but a virus has infected the system and it's crashed.
so now, the patient is slipping away...
to be clear, Nigeria is bankrupt. if this was a company, we'd be in court with our creditors, selling off the spoons to reduce our debt burden!

last year, I predicted that $1 would be N400 by June this year (yes, yes, there's proof); the coronavirus has accelerated all my predictions.
predicting buhari's win in 2015 was interesting; the looks I got were scary. but to be correct on almost everything (yes, I underestimated the extent of 2016's recession) for 5 years, straight? it's a terrifying thought. but do u think saraki or dogara believed me when I warned them in 2018 of impending disgrace? do you think they even heard the warning on facebook and twitter, both?
by December, we'll be EXTREMELY LUCKY if $1 is just N1,000.
you think that's bad? by this time next year, this nation might be a past tense!
how many of you can see the signs?

Nigeria has been ill since the civil war.
Ironically, roadblocks placed to checkmate the Igbo's now prevent ANY REGION from developing.
And we're all to blame- through our silence, complicity, blind eye, or active participation- in the ruin of this nation.
a nation of foolish people.
and now, our chickens have all come home to roost.
- in huge broods.

so, what to do?
understand-
for those who survive this virus, we're going to have the greatest unemployment record in WORLD history. Nigeria is going to enter the Guinness book.
in between is the rampant chaos from a completely lost government structure.
crime so far gets some response; a time cometh when there'll be NO ONE to answer u cry for help. in short-
ANARCHY.

so, what to do?
ideas welcomed.
I'm going to share this to all my contacts.
I suggest u do the same.

TRUNN- The "Rise Up Nigeria" Network

bottom line: Nigeria is sinking. fast.
prepare ur self.

SpecialAgent:
Bros, have you ever went to ur reps or senators office in ur locality? Cause if you do, am pretty sure you would have found at least 100 of his people daily, urging for one thing or the other for the community. Some even write letters which d so called leaders hardly even glance at it. People try that & they are still trying. If d people annoy them too much, they just call the NPF to disperse d crowd

bros, I dey wait ur ansa o!

PYQueen:
Na exile you go get no worry mr if I talk my mind

I been dey expect ur reply o.

wetin hapn na?

SpecialAgent:
Bros, have you ever went to ur reps or senators office in ur locality? Cause if you do, am pretty sure you would have found at least 100 of his people daily, urging for one thing or the other for the community. Some even write letters which d so called leaders hardly even glance at it. People try that & they are still trying. If d people annoy them too much, they just call the NPF to disperse d crowd

market women, teachers and students brought a nation to a halt and saw to e eventual resignation of a dictator-
ALL DONE PEACEFULLY O!
Bros, just admit dt we're a nation of unserious, mentally lazy people.

SpecialAgent:

So in summary, we have to gather people & beg them

oga, every successful democracy is based on THE PEOPLE demanding good governance, rather than complaining, 24/7.
south sudan- THE PEOPLE vs. military dictatorship.
Hong Kong- THE PEOPLE vs. communist China.
India- THE PEOPLE vs. British colonial masters.
examples abound.
Nigeria- THE PEOPLE complain & look for shortcuts.

seun, lalasticlala, mynd44
dis beta rish front page TODAY o!
u guys beta support dis bros hustle.

PYQueen:
so are u expecting Pastor’s to move from house to house to check who has and who has not?
When u need foodstuffs you go to the markets, in this case if u need the miraculous u call or see your Pastor.
Shikena ��‍♀️

dis is surprising.
u want confirmed coronavirus patients to go see d pastors?
- at home, since churches r closed?!
Haba na, I expected u to be better informed than this.
FYI, all positive cases r under quarantine, eh?
which means d pastors have to go heal them at the isolation centres.
have I clued u in?
so, since all pastors already know this (unless they're as uninformed as u seem to b)-
what have they been waiting for?

Eriggs:
sango cough on ur big head a d a amadioha go come piss on ir grave. see whr amebo put u

juuuust keep making my point for me, eh?
las las, u go dey ok.
is d milk yumi?
lol

the short answer-
when Citizens refuse to enforce their will in governance, their government enforces it's own will on Citizens.

In full:
let's go there.

each local government has-
a council
a chairman
a legislator, or two
an HOR member
a senator.
these are your immediate public SERVANTS, who're meant to do YOUR will.

when was the last time you QUERIED any of them about the DEFICIENCIES in your community?
when was the last time you ATTENDED a community/town hall meeting?
when was the last time you advised/engaged your neighbors to join a community campaign for street lights, Primary health care maintenance or repairs in the local primary school?

if you REFUSE to monitor and query YOUR servants, who will do it for you?
after neglecting YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES year after year, there's a crisis and you all SUDDENLY expect govt to have the answers.
who's fooling whom?

I advise that you pick up your phone and use this time to organise the residents on your street so that govt can have data to work with-
how many houses, number of people in each with ages.
so when they say they're bringing foodstuff, you can ask them-
"there are 100 Citizens on my street- 5 over 70, 21 children and 9 unemployed. what are you offering them per day?"

or keep complaining.

powered by-
TRUNN- The "Rise Up Nigeria" Network