Nigeria's Middle-Class Increases By 28 percent!!

VENTURES AFRICA – Nigeria, Africa’s second largest economy with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $263 billion, is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. According to the World Bank and Euromonitor International, the country’s middle class has risen by 28 percent while its GDP based on purchasing power has increased by 21.67 percent in the last four years. The rise in consumer spending, coupled with the convenience of online transactions, has boosted the growth of Internet-based businesses in the country.

Industry Players

Nigeria’s Internet business industry is estimated to be worth $250 million. General merchandise online retailer Jumia, co-founded in June 2012 by a Ghanaian Harvard Business School graduate, Raphael Afaedor, together with Berlinbased Internet start-up incubator, Rocket Internet, is currently the largest ecommerce company in Nigeria. With cash-for-equity funds from investment giants such as JP Morgan, Summit Partners and Millicom, the company has raised over $50 million in the last 12 months. It ran multi-million dollar marketing campaigns that boosted its online store to the fourth most visited local site in Nigeria and processed over a million transactions within a year. In June, the company revealed its 10,000-square-foot ecommerce campus and a 90,000-square-foot warehouse, located in Lagos. Jumia’s local competitor and Nigeria’s second-largest ecommerce operator, Konga Shopping Company, founded by former Google Africa lead Sim Shagaya, also secured funds from Kinnevik – a Swedish investment group – and Naspers MIH Internet Africa – the Internet investment arm of South African media giant, Naspers – to grow operations, though the value of the investments is still undisclosed.


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