By leveraging online platforms, SMEs can access global markets, reduce reliance on physical stores, and automate processes like order processing and payment. This allows them to compete more effectively, grow their customer base, and increase profitability.

Several e-commerce platforms are fueling SME growth in Africa. Prominent e-commerce platforms like Jumia, Konga, Jiji, and Kilimall have established a strong presence, while emerging platforms like Bumpa, SokoSQ, Squarespace, and Shopify are also making waves.

Here’s a more detailed look at some of the key players:

Jumia:

CEO: Sunil Natraj

Jumia is a dominant force in the African e-commerce market, operating in multiple countries and offering a wide range of products. Jumia, a prominent e-commerce platform in Africa, has seen fluctuating results. In the third quarter of 2024, they had 2.4 million quarterly active customers, a slight increase from the previous quarter. Their 2023 revenue was $186.4 million.

Konga:

CEO: Prince Nnamdi Ekeh

Another major player in Nigeria and beyond, Konga offers a diverse selection of goods and services. In the year 2020, Konga, an online marketplace for physical goods based in Lagos, Nigeria, had 23 million web visitors. About 36% of these visitors were aged 25 to 34 years. Konga is considered one of Nigeria’s leading online marketplaces.

Kilimall:

Founder: Yang Tao

Based in Kenya, Kilimall is a significant player in the East African market. Kilimall, a Chinese e-commerce company, has a significant presence in Africa, with a strong focus on Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria.

They offer a wide range of products and cater to local tastes and preferences. Kilimall has also implemented initiatives to support education and entrepreneurship on the continent.

Bumpa:

Founders: Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele

Focusing on the Nigerian market, Bumpa is a growing platform for SMEs. Bumpa has seen significant growth, increasing its customer base from 2,500 to over 7,000 merchants, with an average monthly growth of 50%. They’ve also supported over 200,000 orders and a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $20 million. It is estimated that Bumpa will experience a 38% increase in stores created on their platform by the end of 2024.

Jiji:

Founder: Anton Volianskyi

Jiji is another popular Nigerian e-commerce platform. The marketplace provides buyers and sellers with an avenue to meet and exchange goods and services.

Jiji boasts 12 million monthly active users across seven African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana. It also operates in Bangladesh. Its annual transaction value exceeds $10 billion USD. The platform had 10 million unique monthly visits and two million active ads with a combined worth of $10 billion as of this year.

SokoSQ:

Founders: Ezeala Adaugo Godsgift and Frankline Ugwu

SokoSQ is an AI-powered e-commerce tool helping African small businesses do more than just go digital, it helps their websites work harder.

In just a few months since launch, it has onboarded over 1,500 SMEs and is already approaching ₦1 billion in GMV.

Tailored to the realities of African entrepreneurs, SokoSQ combines high-converting online stores with AI-driven marketing, business management, and customer engagement, all in one seamless platform.

For SMEs that have relied on Instagram or WhatsApp, it bridges the gap between visibility and actual scalability, offering AI-generated product descriptions, store optimization, sales tracking, and inventory tools.

Squarespace:

Founder: Anthony Casalena

While primarily a website builder, Squarespace offers features for selling products, making it a suitable option for some SMEs. Squarespace is a popular website builder with over 4.9 million unique subscriptions and a $1.12 billion annual revenue run rate. In 2023, the company generated $1.01 billion in revenue, with a 17% increase in revenue compared to 2022. Squarespace is used by approximately 2.0% of all websites and has a 17% market share among simple website builders.

Shopify:

Founders: Scott Lake, Tobias Lütke and Daniel Weinand

Shopify is a popular platform for building online stores, with a strong presence in the African market. Shopify powers over 4 million online stores globally and has processed over $886 billion in e-commerce sales since its launch. The platform’s annual revenue reached $5.6 billion in 2023, a 20% increase from the previous year. Shopify supports over 175 countries and has a significant presence in North America, with 70% of its merchants located there. Mobile traffic makes up 71% of Shopify’s total traffic.

KudiGo Storefront:

Founder: Kingsley Abrokwah

This platform is specifically tailored for the African market, offering affordable pricing and features for SMEs. The freemium platform for e-commerce, saw a significant increase in merchant success in the last quarter, with a 260% rise in monthly transaction volume.

The platform offers features like payment processing, customer management, and inventory management, with a limit of 50 products in the free version and up to 5,000 in the full, paid version. In 2019, a high percentage (95%) of sales on the system were cash transactions, indicating the prevalence of cash transactions in some regions.

Other Notable Platforms:

Platforms like Yoco, Kalahari.com, and Bidorbuy.com also contribute to the growth of e-commerce in Africa.

These platforms are helping SMEs reach a wider audience, increase their sales, and grow their businesses by leveraging the power of online retail in Africa.

WhoGoHost, West Africa’s largest cloud infrastructure company, has today announced the acquisition of SendChamp, the cloud communications startup that powers online messaging for African businesses for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition is part of WhoGoHost’s strategic plans to deepen its value offering for its customer base.

Founded by Goodness Kayode and Damilola Olotu in 2021, SendChamp is a cloud communications provider that allows businesses to send and receive customer messages across different channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, email, and voice.

Over the last 2 years, the startup has worked with over 6000 businesses including Surebet247, Baxi, Chowdeck, Wirepay by Maplerad, Bumpa, and TeamApt.

In 2021, SendChamp had previously announced a $100,000 angel round from local syndicates including DFS Lab, Hustler Capital, HoaQ Club, Velocity Digital and a couple of other angel investors— the only round raised to date.

While the cost is undisclosed, the acquisition carries potential positives for all parties involved. Whogohost stands to benefit from SendChamp’s product suite across marketing messages, OTP, and customer support systems, deepening its value proposition, while SendChamp will benefit from its access to Whogohost’s over 100,000 customer databases.

Speaking on the acquisition, Goodness Kayode, CEO at SendChamp, said, “We received offers from a number of businesses across diverse industries at different points in our journey but ultimately went with Whogohost when an offer came given the synergies between our products and strategic positioning are clear. With this acquisition, we get to keep building SendChamp as an interoperable product within Whogohost’s integrated platform.”

At Whogohost, the acquisition of SendChamp is regarded as the first in a strategic series of steps that will see the company transform from a domain and hosting infrastructure company to a diverse digital services platform that focuses on domains, online presence, communication, and online commerce products.

Opeyemi Awoyemi Founder at Whogohost had this to say about the acquisition, “Over the last 16 years, Whogohost has provided domain hosting services to hundreds of thousands of businesses. The acquisition of SendChamp presents us with a unique opportunity to evolve our business from domain-hosting to a one-stop shop for digital services for entrepreneurs and businesses in Africa. We’re excited about what this means for us.”

According to both companies, SendChamp will continue to operate as an independent product in the months following the acquisition as it transitions to new ownership. However, soon, its products and services will become accessible via the Whogohost integrated platform. The reason for this is to allow for a smooth transition with minimal interruption to existing customer service.

As part of the acquisition deal, the CEO & CTO of Sendchamp and some members of the Sendchamp team will be joining Whogohost. Goodness Kayode will join as the Chief Product Officer while Damilola Olotu as the Chief Technology Officer of Whogohost.

Goodness Kayode and Damilola Olotu, Sendchamp is a cloud-based communication platform that allows businesses to send and receive messages to their customers across different channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, email, and voice.

Sendchamp has onboarded over 6000+ businesses across its API and No-code CRM tool product processing over 50m+ messages across messaging channels with customers ranging from VC-backed startups to enterprise businesses like Prudential Zenith, Surebet247, Baxi, Chowdeck, Wirepay by Maplerad, and Bumpa, among others.

The fund will fast-track Bumpa’s goal to build the future of commerce for African sellers.

Other investors who participated in the round were Plug & Play Ventures — through their commerce fund, SHL Capital — Sahil Lavingia, CEO of Gumroad, Magic Fund, Jedar Capital, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, E62 Ventures, Club14, and Fast Forward Ventures.

In a time when venture funding has seen a steady decline in Africa, Bumpa has garnered the interest of investors and partners on its audacious move to enable business growth for one million SMEs across Africa for its next growth phase.

Luci Fonesca, Principal at Base10 Partners, who led this round of investment had this to say about investing in Bumpa at this time in the VC market, “Bumpa is building a mission that we love and were excited to get behind, enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs,” said Luci Fonseca, Principal at Base10 Partners. “The more we spent time with Kelvin and Teejay, the more we saw that they are very special founders and have a powerful mission to build the defining e-commerce platform in Nigeria and across Africa.”

Building the Bumpa Dream

Initially named SalesCabal, Bumpa, was started in February 2021 by co-founders, Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele, to provide affordable and stable websites to SMEs in Nigeria.

According to a Statista report, Nigeria houses 41 million MSMEs that contribute 50% of Nigeria’s GDP. However, despite these numbers, business owners across the country deal with daily issues like a lack of trust, payments, technology, marketing, and others.

While Salecabal solved the problem of giving SMEs an affordable way to start selling online, the team would discover that the e-commerce space had more significant problems and equally held more promise than they thought.

Bumpa 1.0

Armed with the knowledge of the industry and the initial success of what had been achieved with Salescabal, Adetunji and Kelvin launched the first version of the app to make selling online easy for business owners.

The first version of the Bumpa app provided free websites for business owners in 60 seconds and other business management solutions such as the ability to record sales, receive payment, manage orders & inventory, issue invoice & receipts, send bulk SMS and emails to customers, and receive business reports all from their mobile device anywhere and everywhere in the world.

From Pre-Seed to Seed: The Race to Make an Indelible Mark in E-commerce

Last year, Bumpa announced a $200k pre-seed round, led by Opeyemi Awoyemi of Fast Forward Venture Studio Fund with other notable VCs and angel investors like Microtraction, OO Nwoye, DFS Labs, Pioneer VC, and more. A few months later, it also received a $50k grant from the Google Black Founder Fund.

These rounds helped the startup hire more employees and roll out user features like discounts and coupons, custom domain names, Facebook pixel integration, staff accounts, and multi-currency checkouts.

However, the most important feature would come just a few months ago. Informed by internal data that showed that 40% of the transactions on Bumpa came from Instagram, the startup completed integration with Meta (parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram among others) that made selling on Instagram faster for business owners that sell on social media. This feature release helped solidify Bumpa’s claim to being the King of Social Commerce, as it bridged the gap between social media and digital commerce for online sellers.

Bumpa x Meta Integration Now Live!

Its users can now receive Instagram DMs on the Bumpa app, share products, share invoices/receipts, record sales, and request payment on Instagram without leaving the Bumpa app.

Bumpa has, since inception, gathered over 50k+ SMEs, who use the app’s resources to run their business, with 40% monthly active users. The company also stated that it has recorded 400K+ product listings and $20 million in order value.

Speaking on the journey from their pre-seed to their seed round, Adetunji, Bumpa’s CTO, stated that; “We achieved some success with providing websites and other tools for business owners, but when we listened to our customers, we discovered that they needed to do more. What tools can we give to help them attract more customers, make more sales, connect to their social media handles to run ads, and close sales faster? We knew it was time to do more.”

What’s next for Bumpa 2.0

With the raise and the backing of investors and partners that believe in the vision of Bumpa, the startup is currently looking to expand its product offerings, embedding more social commerce solutions for the growing number African SMEs in need of digital solutions. These features, integrations, and connections will give SMEs more control over how they manage and scale their business.

Bumpa will also be expanding access to its product to new African markets in the coming months. Although there is currently speculation about what markets are up next, the team is keeping its cards close to the chest.

In addition to market expansion, Bumpa will also be expanding its team with a focus on Marketing, Engineering, and Business roles as it prepares to help more merchants achieve business success. Interested applicants should keep an eye on the startup’s career page.

Kelvin Umechukwu, CEO of Bumpa, in giving his statement about what Bumpa is set to do, had this to say,“ The goal is to do three things: connect, innovate and scale. Bumpa 2.0 for us as a startup is to connect all the relevant tools, channels, and places that SMEs need all in one place: the Bumpa app. It is also to innovate by bringing simpler, automated ways to do any business transaction or operation on the app. It is also to scale our user’s businesses, our position as key players in the African commerce industry, and to scale the capacities and reach of the employees and even we, the founders.”

The Bumpa app is available on the Google Play Store and the Apple store for download.

How can this be?

The Bumpa app can now be connected to users’ Facebook and Instagram accounts; messages from these social platforms can be received and responded to via the app.

Just by clicking a button, users can also share and sell products, share invoices/receipts, and record sales which go straight to the customers’ DM on any of the platforms. 

Bumpa was built on a goal to make business management easy for business owners anywhere and everywhere. The platform provides business owners with the ease of displaying products, issuing invoices and receipts, recording expenses, sending messages to customers, receiving business reports, and recording sales from every channel they sell, among others.

“We discovered something. Asides the conventional methods of selling products that our users are used to, such as physical shops, websites, marketplaces etc, there’s a booming market for selling on social media. 

Social commerce on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and TikTok was driving massive SME sales,” the company notes.

Bumpa’s user survey showed that over 30% of the sales recorded on the Bumpa app come from Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp alone. It also affirms that the statistics from Meta caught its business eye.

“Statistics show that over 80% of Instagram users have said that they discover new products and decide whether they want to buy a product or service on Instagram.

Instagram has also reported that 65% of people on its platform, that come across a brand on Instagram visit the brand’s website or app.

With over 1 billion users across the world on Instagram alone, it is clear that there is a huge market for entrepreneurs on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook and that’s the very reason we have worked tirelessly over the past few months to make this integration possible.”

This means business owners can now enjoy ease, speed and efficiency on all of Meta’s platforms with the Bumpa app.

How To Connect Your Bumpa App To Meta — Facebook & Instagram

• Download or update the Bumpa app on Google Play Store or the Apple Store 
• Open your Bumpa app
• Click on the More button at the bottom of your screen
• Click on Connected Apps
• Click on Meta
• Continue to sign in with your Facebook account
• Select the Instagram business account you want to connect to Bumpa
• Select the Facebook page you want to use with Bumpa
• Slide the buttons to fully connect your accounts with Bumpa