At Jumia, Sustainability equals strategy

Today we released our 2021 Sustainability report. It is the first time we have captured our Sustainability actions in a document. Someone said to me that after reading our Sustainability report she understood our corporate strategy. That was when the penny dropped for me! She is right.

Jumia Team in a warehouse in Kenya

Sustainability is at the core of our business, and when I talk about Sustainability at Jumia I am describing our corporate mission and strategy at the same time.

Take for example the millions of consumers who live in rural areas with limited assortment of goods to buy.

The few goods they find are unaffordable because they are often priced significantly higher than in the cities. They are already experiencing structural inequality compared to people in the cities.

We provide a platform for these consumers to access the same goods available to city dwellers and at the same prices.

We provide a logistics network to deliver orders to them.

We ensure our app consumes very minimal data because they cannot afford high internet bills.

We support them with agents who explain things in local languages.

In 2021, 27% of our deliveries were to rural areas.

By doing all these we are reducing inequality but is this Sustainability or is it Strategy? Clearly it is both.

Electric scooters for deliveries in Ghana with Solar Taxi, and electric bicycles with Ebee in Kenya

There are so many ways that Jumia impacts lives and creates opportunities for people in Africa. To learn more about this, go to ESG 2021 Report and read it yourself.

Sustainability is a journey and one year is not enough to do everything we want to do. But I am very happy that what we have done so far matters and means a lot to our stakeholders.

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Juliet Anammah Group Chief Sustainability Officer at Jumia

Juliet joined Jumia in 2015 as Chief Executive Officer of Jumia Nigeria. Juliet has over 28 years of professional experience covering consulting, consumer goods, sales and marketing and e-commerce and has served on several boards in a non-executive capacity. She serves on the Board of CGAP, a non profit agency funded by IFC/ World Bank and other DFIs and focused on improving financial inclusion in the developing world. In 2018, she became a member of the Nigerian Industrial Council - a group of private and public sector professionals appointed by the President of Nigeria to define policies supporting Industrial development of the country. She began her career in Sanofi Aventis, and held various roles in sales, marketing, and product management between 1991-1999. She joined Accenture in 1999 rising to be the Partner / Managing Director overseeing Accenture's Manufacturing and Consumer Goods Practice covering West Africa. Juliet has a Bachelor of Pharmacy Degree, an MBA in Finance from ESUT, Nigeria, and is an alumnus of Wharton Advanced Management Program.