Jumia discontinues Prime, its subscription-based delivery service in Africa

Jumia Prime, the Amazon-styled subscription-based delivery service of African e-commerce giant Jumia, has been suspended indefinitely, according to the company.

Launched in 2019 as a user acquisition strategy, Jumia Prime was a subscription-based delivery service that provided its customers with free shipping on the e-commerce platform.

According to Jumia, the service was an "experiment" which fell short of its targets "in terms of consumer traction and stickiness", as the market is probably "not yet mature enough", which resulted in the decision "to pause this initiative."

Despite the company recording more than 3.1 million quarterly active customers on the e-commerce platform during Q3 2022, a 3.5% YoY increase from the same period last year, it turns out that this traction wasn't enough to make the company reach its targets with Jumia Prime.

In a related news, Jumia announced the suspenstion of its logistics-as-a-service offering in selected geographies, particularly "to non e-commerce clients in countries where [it] believes management efforts would be best invested in improving the logistics efficiency for the core e-commerce business."

It will, however, continue Jumia Logistics in Nigeria, Morocco and Ivory Coast "where logistics infrastructure is ready to support third-party volume and where proof of concept for this service has already been established."