Jumia Resurrected: The Local Playbook Beating Global Giants Across Africa This Holiday Season

Based on Hunterbrook Media’s reporting, Hunterbrook Capital is long $JMIA at the time of publication. Positions may change at any time. See full disclosures below.

LAGOS, Nigeria — This year’s most captivating Black Friday story may be thousands of miles from America’s midnight campouts and flatscreen fistfights.

On a late November day in Isolo, on the industrial outskirts of Lagos, Jumia’s main warehouse in Nigeria looked less like a sterile corporate operation and more like a humming ecosystem trying to keep up with a nation’s worth of orders. The compound spans 30,000 square meters and every corner pulsed with the urgency of Black Friday, a concept Jumia first brought to the continent over a decade ago.

Past the security gate, the honking of trucks and roar of planes from the nearby airport gave way to a blur of movement: workers in orange and green reflective jackets bending over computers, taping boxes, hauling sacks of rice, carting air conditioners, and shuttling refrigerators toward the outbound docks. Products rose in towers — washing machines, stoves, bags of grain — forming a skyline of demand.

“This is the busiest time of year,” said Richmond Carlos Otu, Jumia’s chief