Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia has announced that it will end its food delivery service by the end of the year because the business has proved to be unprofitable.

The decision affects all of the seven countries where it provides the service – Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Ivory Coast.

Jumia said in a statement that food delivery was “a business with very challenging economics”, and it decided to focus on the physical goods side of the business, where mobile phones are the most ordered item on the company’s platform.

Jumia was the first Africa-focused tech firm to list on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 – about seven years after it was launched in Nigeria by two French entrepreneurs.

BBC