Afrikrea Launches Anka: E-commerce SaaS for African Creators | DHL & Visa Partnership

Afrikrea Launches ANKA: An All-in-One E-commerce Platform for African Merchants

Founded in 2016, Afrikrea initially emerged as an online marketplace dedicated to clothing, accessories, art, and crafts originating from or inspired by Africa. Over the subsequent five years, the company has successfully connected over 7,000 sellers across 47 African nations with customers in 170 countries worldwide.

Growing Marketplace and Merchant Challenges

Afrikrea currently experiences over 500,000 monthly visits, with the majority of its clientele located in Europe and North America. Transactions facilitated through the platform have exceeded $15 million. However, while Afrikrea provides a valuable platform for African merchants, it represents only one of several available channels for sales, alongside individual websites and social media platforms.

Moulaye Taboure, co-founder and CEO, identified a significant issue: merchants were dispersing their efforts across multiple channels. This fragmentation negatively impacted their engagement with Afrikrea and overall sales performance.

Taboure explained to TechCrunch that sellers were expending considerable time, resources, and energy managing various sales outlets. Each product listing required placement on social media, Afrikrea, and other websites. Furthermore, tracking orders and providing consistent customer service proved difficult without a centralized system.

Introducing ANKA: A Unified E-commerce Solution

Last year, Afrikrea initiated testing of a comprehensive, all-in-one SaaS e-commerce platform designed to address these challenges. Today, the official launch of this platform, named ANKA, has been announced.

ANKA empowers users to sell products from Africa, facilitate global shipping, and receive payments through both local and international African payment methods.

ANKA’s Core Features and Functionality

The platform offers e-commerce, payment processing, and global shipping capabilities. It provides an omnichannel dashboard, enabling users to manage inventory, orders, and messages from a single interface.

Customers can sell through customized online storefronts, similar to Shopify, as well as via social media platforms, link-in-bio tools like Gumroad, and the existing Afrikrea marketplace.

ANKA facilitates payments and payouts through a dedicated wallet and an Afrikrea Visa card. The platform, priced at $12 per month, supports mobile money and mobile banking transactions via MPesa, Orange, MTN, and PayPal.

Shipping is integrated into the entire sales process, from point of sale to final delivery. Afrikrea established a partnership with DHL in 2019 to provide shipping services to its customer base.

Market Opportunity and Potential

Fashion currently represents ANKA’s top-performing category, benefiting from its association with Afrikrea. The African fashion and apparel market is estimated to be worth $31 billion, according to Euromonitor. Afrikrea estimates that its core markets represent a $12.5 billion annual spend.

• The African diaspora in Europe accounts for $1 billion.
• Those in America and the Caribbean contribute $9 billion.
• Non-Africans with connections to the continent spend $2.5 billion.

McKinsey & Company projects that overall consumer spending on the continent will reach $2.1 trillion by 2025. E-commerce is anticipated to comprise up to 10% of total retail sales.

Competitive Landscape and ANKA’s Differentiation

Platforms such as Jumia, Mall4Africa, and Takealot have been instrumental in driving e-commerce growth across Africa over the past decade. MallforAfrica partnered with DHL in 2015, subsequently launching DHL Africa eShop four years later, serving consumers in over 30 African countries from over 200 sellers in the U.S. and U.K.

Unlike MallforAfrica and other import-focused e-commerce platforms, ANKA is specifically designed to facilitate the export of African products. Moulaye Taboure asserts that ANKA is currently the largest e-commerce exporter on the continent.

Since partnering with DHL, the platform has shipped over 10 tons of cargo monthly from Africa. Taboure emphasized the company’s commitment to showcasing African products on a global scale, with Kenya and Nigeria representing its largest markets.

“We are the biggest client of DHL exporting from Africa. We ship 10 tons every month and have sellers in 47 African countries. We have something African that is going to a global scale. Our aim isn’t simply to resolve an African issue; we aspire to address a global need for African products,” Taboure stated.

Funding and Future Growth

Since its launch five years ago, Afrikrea, founded by Moulaye Taboure, Luc B. Perussault Diallo, and Kadry Diallo, has secured $2.1 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The company’s revenue has grown fivefold during this period, and its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) now surpasses its total funding to date. Afrikrea is currently finalizing a Series A funding round, expected to be completed later this year.