Jumia, a Nigeria-based e-commerce platform, announced on Friday it is offering support for marketplaces, logistics, and online payments to governments in Africa as part of the global action against the COVID-19 outbreak. Founded in 2012, Jumia offers e-commerce services through its marketplace, logistics, and JumiaPay. The company further explained:
“With over 1 billion people and 500 million internet users in Africa, Jumia believes that e-commerce is making people’s lives easier by helping them shop and pay for millions of products at the best prices wherever they live. E-commerce is also creating new opportunities for SMEs to grow, and job opportunities for a new generation to thrive.”
Jumia’s actions to support governments in their fight against COVID-19 include:
- Facilitation of social distancing by enabling consumers to buy online. By offering contactless delivery options, we eliminate physical contact and potentially reduce the person to person infection.
- Providing access to affordable basic foods and sanitary essentials on the marketplace platform by partnering with thousands of vendors, like Reckitt Benckiser, and others, we are able to maintain fair prices and fight against speculation.
- Offering Jumia’s logistics networks to help distribute health pamphlets & key products to where they are needed. Additionally, Jumia provide safe deliveries to consumers everywhere, including remote and rural areas, with Jumia’s integrated logistics network. This is important especially for elderly and sick people at home.
- Sourcing and distribution of face masks. Leveraging our access to supply, in particular through our network of vendors outside Africa, we have donated certified face masks to Health Ministries in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, and others, and offered to coordinate the distribution across healthcare facilities and workers.
- Incentives to pay online through JumiaPay, in support of the governments’ bid to reduce the risk of transmission through physical cash.
- Enhancing visibility of key health instructions. Jumia attracts millions of customer visits and searches on its platform. It is also collaborating with the Ministries of Health in Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Uganda and South Africa by using our online platform to share important health messages from the Ministries.
Speaking about the company’s efforts to prevent COVID-19 from spreading even further, Juliet Anammah, Group Head of Institutional Affairs at Jumia, added:
“We are proud to partner with relevant authorities to help fight against COVID-19 and support our communities which continue to support us. E-commerce platforms like ours, with e-payment and last mile delivery capabilities, are uniquely positioned to be part of Africa’s response strategy to this pandemic and we are swiftly taking actions.”
