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Jumia's Kenyan business recorded Sh6.4 billion ($49.7 million) in sales in the three months to June 2026, its highest quarterly figure since the e-commerce company began publishing individual market breakdowns in January 2025. The number represents an 84.1 percent jump from Sh3.5 billion ($27 million) in the same quarter last year, and it came despite a drag from weakening smartphone sales that has rattled online retailers across the region.
Jumia attributed the growth to unusually strong demand for fashion and beauty products, which it said cushioned the impact of a global memory chip shortage that has pushed up phone prices and slowed handset purchases. The company did not break down sales by category, so the exact scale of the fashion surge or the electronics decline in Kenya specifically is not public.
A Standout Quarter Inside a Cautious Group Result
Kenya's performance formed part of a broader set of second quarter results that Jumia Technologies AG released on August 12. Group revenue rose 14 percent year on year to $52 million, gross profit climbed 28 percent to $30.7 million, and the adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed 36 percent to $8.7 million from $13.6 million a year earlier. On an earnings call the same day, chief executive Francis Dufay described Kenya as showing healthy growth on the back of strong supply fundamentals and efficient marketing execution, even as phone and electronics shortages softened volumes across the platform.
Physical goods GMV in Kenya rose 23 percent year on year for the quarter, trailing Nigeria's 36 percent and Ghana's 77 percent but ahead of a flat Ivory Coast, where a near 60 percent collapse in cocoa farm gate prices hit upcountry purchasing power. Dufay told analysts that phones account for between 10 and 20 percent of group GMV and other electronics slightly more than 20 percent, and that the reduction in the company's full year GMV growth guidance, now trimmed to 20 to 30 percent from an earlier range, was broadly attributable to that category.
Jumia also disclosed a $50 million capital raise anchored by a $25 million investment from the International Finance Corporation, a move that strengthens a balance sheet the company had flagged as thinning earlier in the year. As TechInKenya reported in July, Jumia's liquidity had fallen to $62.6 million by the end of the first quarter, down from $110.7 million a year earlier, after a 13 year run of losses that has cost the company roughly $2.2 billion since its 2012 founding. Management has maintained its target of adjusted EBITDA breakeven and positive cash flow by the fourth quarter of 2026, with full year profitability to follow in 2027.
Why Phones Got More Expensive
The pressure on smartphone sales in Kenya is not a Jumia problem alone. It traces back to a global scramble for memory chips that has been building since 2025, as AI companies buy up DRAM and NAND flash for data centres at prices phone makers cannot match. Counterpoint Research has said mobile DRAM prices have risen close to 70 percent since early 2025, while Gartner has projected memory costs could climb roughly 130 percent by the end of 2026, pushing smartphone prices up around 13 percent and PC prices up about 17 percent against 2025 levels.
IDC has gone further, forecasting that the average global selling price of a smartphone will rise 14 percent this year to an all time high of $523, and that manufacturers will no longer be able to profitably build phones priced under $100. The research firm expects global smartphone shipments to fall 12.9 percent in 2026 to 1.12 billion units, the weakest year in more than a decade. Francisco Jeronimo, who leads IDC's mobile devices research, has described the shortage as a supply chain shock originating in memory manufacturing that is now rippling through the entire consumer electronics industry.
The mechanics are straightforward. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron control more than 95 percent of global DRAM production, and all three have redirected capacity toward high bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, where margins are far higher than in consumer chips. That leaves less silicon available for the entry level and mid range phones that dominate sales in markets like Kenya, where memory now makes up a larger share of a device's total bill of materials than it did before the shortage began. Budget handsets, the segment most Kenyan buyers rely on, are the most exposed because memory accounts for a disproportionate share of their component costs.
Logistics Disruption Added to the Squeeze
The chip shortage has been compounded by disruption to the freight routes that move electronics into East Africa. Conflict in the Middle East earlier this year forced repeated airspace closures over Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and neighbouring states, grounding cargo carriers including Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad for stretches at a time and diverting flights that typically pass through Gulf hubs like Dubai and Doha. Data from air cargo intelligence firm Rotate showed the closures cut available global air cargo capacity by 18 percent week on week at the height of the disruption.
Those hubs matter for Kenyan importers because they sit on the main air freight corridors linking Asian electronics manufacturing centres to East Africa. Even as a ceasefire has allowed Gulf carriers to gradually rebuild schedules through the third quarter, operational updates from logistics providers show Doha airspace remains only partially open, with traffic restricted to published corridors, and capacity still below pre conflict levels. The combined effect of costlier components and slower, less predictable freight has made phones a harder category for platforms like Jumia to stock competitively, even as demand for lighter, more easily shipped goods such as clothing and cosmetics has held up.
Kenya's Place in Jumia's Turnaround
Kenya remains Jumia's third largest African market behind Ivory Coast and Nigeria, and the company has continued to treat it as a growth priority rather than a market to retrench from. Dufay told investors that extending Jumia's delivery network to dozens of additional Kenyan towns ahead of the year end shopping season is a stated priority for the third quarter, part of a broader push into upcountry regions that already account for a majority of the platform's order volume across its African markets.
Whether the fashion led growth of the second quarter can be sustained through the rest of 2026 will depend in part on factors outside Jumia's control, including how long memory chip prices stay elevated and how quickly Gulf air cargo capacity returns to normal. SK Hynix's chief executive said in July that the memory shortage could persist well beyond 2030, a timeline that, if it holds, suggests phone prices in markets like Kenya are unlikely to ease significantly in the near term.
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