Jumia appoints new CEO as co-founders step down

Jumia co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec have stepped down from their positions as co-CEOs of the African e-commerce giant effective today.

TechCrunch reports that the announcement was made in a press statement sent out today by the company’s Supervisory Board as part of a management shakeup.

Jonathan Klein, the chairman of the company’s Supervisory Board, said in the announcement that the company is grateful to have had them at its helm for the last decade.

“We thank Jeremy and Sacha for their leadership over the last decade to envision and build a company that became the leading pan-African e-commerce player,” Klein said.

The statement says that Francis Dufay, who was until recently the executive vice president for Jumia Africa, overseeing its entire operation on the continent, will step into the CEO role at the company.

“As we look ahead to the next chapter of Jumia’s journey, we want to bring more focus to the core e-commerce business as part of a more simplified and efficient organization with stronger fundamentals and a clearer path to profitability. We look forward to working closely with Francis, Antoine and the leadership team to execute on these objectives and continue on our mission of offering a compelling e-commerce platform to consumers, sellers and the broader Jumia ecosystem in Africa,” he added.

Read also: Jumia tops as Nigeria dominates the list of 100 most-funded African startups.

Dufay, who has been with the company since 2014, was previously the CEO of the Ivory Coast operation.

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray, who has been at the company for six years, championing its move into the public market as the Chief Financial Officer, will now serve as a member of the company’s management board. Maillet-Mezeray will also be taking on a new role as the company’s executive vice president of finance and operations.

Jumia was launched in Nigeria in 2012 and expanded to five other countries: Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and South Africa. In 2014, the company launched offices in Tunisia, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, Algeria, and Uganda, and by 2018 it was present in 14 African countries.

Jumia has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange for over a decade of operations. Its products include its flagship e-commerce store, JumiaPay, the company’s payment solution division, a marketplace, and a logistics business.

The company has raised over $885 million across six funding rounds in the past seven years, becoming one of the most funded African startups ever. Though founded in Lagos in 2012, its massive footprint on the continent has made it possible to break away from being a Nigerian-based company to a genuinely pan-African business.

Jumia has always threaded ambitious paths, raising a whopping $45 million in a series A round led by Blakeney Management, Rocket Internet, and Millicom Systems in 2012. It then gulped $150 million in a Series B round in 2013, just a year after it started operations.

Read also: Here are the top 10 startups in Nigeria for 2022, according to LinkedIn 

At the time of reporting, the reason for the shakeup at the company’s management level hadn’t been made public.