Afrimarket Lands €10 Million To Deploy E-commerce Platform Across Francophone Africa

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The French e-commerce startup, Afrimarket, has raised €10 million from the Global Innovation Fund and the private sector arm of the French Development Agency (AFD), Proparco, as well from as a handful of individual investors such as the co-founder of PriceMinister, Olivier Mathiot, who’s been granted a seat on Afrimarket’s board.

At a glance, the company seems to have it made-- except that growth within the e-commerce sector across the continent has consistently failed to meet expectations, and foreign-owned, foreigner-run e-commerce copy-cat plays backed by the likes of Rocket Internet continue to have precious little to show in terms of solid success.

The bottom line is that this is Africa, and Afrimarket’s founder and CEO, Rania Belkahia, better have a few good tricks up her sleeve; including a tonne of patience and access to a lot more cash, if her company is to achieve its ambitious aspiration of dominating the French-speaking West African e-commerce market.

In this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, we share a conversation Andile Masuku had with Ernesto Spruyt, the founder of Tunga, an online market network that provides international clients access to African coding talent. He also happens to serve as Chief Mentor for Telegraph Media Group’s DigitalX accelerator program in Amsterdam.

Ernesto explains what prompted him to come to Africa looking for coding talent, and shares a few key things African coders who aspire to having international careers ought to be keeping top of mind.