DHL is closing down its Africa eShop service at the end of October 2021. The online shopping platform allowed customers in 34 African countries to order goods from 200 European and US-based retailers such as GAP, Macy’s and Nordstrom.
For some time it looked like Africa eShop would buck the trend. It vastly expanded the country coverage of the service in late 2019, just months after it partnered with MallforAfrica to launch the Africa eShop app in 11 countries. The expansion was in sharp contrast to the failure of two high profile digital shopping platforms in Africa: CFAO’s Africashop, which closed down in 2018 and Casino/Bolloré’s cDiscount, which closed down in its francophone African markets of Senegal and Cameroon in 2016.
The closure comes ahead of the busy periods of Black Friday (which DHL has promoted heaving in 2019 and 2020) and Christmas. It strongly suggests that the cost and complexity of running Africa eShop outstripped gains. Any hope DHL might have had that the platform would gain from the same post-COVID-19 swing towards online shopping has not materialised.
We don’t know why DHL is pulling the plug and apart from a notice on the Africa eShop website the company is not saying. As at late September, it was still actively marketing itself as open for business. We suspect that demand simply wasn’t high enough and the growth of other general merchandise and fashion online retailers including Jumia will have eaten into its potential customer base.
Overall, there isn’t much to conclude from Africa eShop’s failure in terms of what it tells us about ecommerce in Africa. Like CFAO and Casino/Bolloré’s efforts before it, it has had the wrong service for African markets: too niche and probably too complex at a time of global supply chain disruption.
We don’t believe it marks the end of DHL’s interest in ecommerce in African markets. But it will need a different proposition to the idea of connecting global retailers with African consumers. One example of that is DP World’s Dubuy platform, an attempt by the ports operator to connect primarily Chinese and Indian manufacturers with wholesalers and retailers in African markets. It is a more flexible, mass market offer that has the potential to turn DP World into a de facto buying group, or simply allow it to become an Alibaba-style marketplace of goods.
