While #Jumia, Africa's largest e-commerce operator, is shutting down its operations in Cameroon and Tanzania, Kenya's e-commerce startup #Copia has raised $26 million in a Series B equity round to scale its agency model across Kenya and other markets.

One of the major challenges for African e-commerce players is building trust. #Copia has leveraged local agents (5,000+ agents) to enable their 180,000+ customers in rural areas to shop for products and provide reliable last-mile delivery to "base of the pyramid" consumers.

Copia has so far fulfilled over 3,000,000 orders and the recent injection of capital is set to transform middle to low-income Africans into empowered global consumers. Is this agency approach the answer to bringing African consumers online? https://medium.com/@harriet436/agency-e-commerce-an-innovative-sub-saharan-african-e-commerce-model-3ab26e0e3251

Amazon’s enviable growth in India is built on the back of a robust logistics network including its “I have space” program that harnesses Kirana stores (local agents) for storing the Amazon consignments to ensure last-mile delivery of #Amazon consignments to customers.

In China, #Alibaba recognized the potential of rural market and introduced Taobao Villages (TVs), which are rural e-commerce centers that feature Alibaba’s logistics, service and training to encourage farmers to become involved in online retailing.

Agency model is not a new concept in sub-Saharan Africa. In the banking and mobile money sector, agency model has been able to enhance financial inclusion in the region by reaching people that traditional, branch-based structures would have been unable to reach.

This existing agency network can be leveraged upon by e-commerce players to solve several challenges facing the sector: high logistics costs, competition from the informal sector and growing consumer mistrust on the use of online commerce.

Read more on my thoughts about this agency e-commerce approach as an effective business model to tap into the African consumer market that’s predicted to generate $2.1 trillion in consumer spending by 2025. https://medium.com/@harriet436/agency-e-commerce-an-innovative-sub-saharan-african-e-commerce-model-3ab26e0e3251