Abidjan startup Janngo has raised €1 million seed funding to launch and grow new digital platforms targeting African SMEs while creating tech-enabled jobs at scale for women and youth.
The firm also announced launch of its Paris and Abidjan offices during Paris Tech for Good Summit and Viva Technology.
“With Janngo, we want to empower African SMEs, leveraging technology to improve access to market and business performance. We build turnkey solutions to support their growth, access new market opportunities, build capacity, improve their productivity and boost their competitiveness,” said Fatoumata Bâ, Founder & CEO of Janngo.
Janngo’s first funding round attracted both African and international capital with a pool of experimented investors including the Mulliez Family ;Clipperton Investment bank and Soeximex.
Janngo focuses on building world-class digital solutions adapted to the african context and enabling SMEs targeting essential sectors such as agriculture, health and education, logistics or financial services, fashion and tourism industries.
Founded by Fatoumata Bâ, Founder of Jumia in Côte d’Ivoire, previously Managing Director of Jumia in Nigeria and Member of Jumia Executive Committee at Africa level, the platform aims to accelerate the growth of African SMEs through faster, better and cheaper access to market.
African SMEs represent up to 17% of the GDP but face fragmented markets, prohibitively expensive operational costs, under optimized and non integrated supply chains with limited access to international markets, insufficient capacity and limited access to capital to scale their business; yet, they generate more than 85% of jobs on the continent, with major untapped opportunities. With fast growing markets such as Côte d’Ivoire consistently delivering a record 8% growth, a booming middle class, a continent home to more 1 million inhabitant cities than Europe already and mobile leapfrog pioneers such as Nigeria, with the highest number of mobile internet users worldwide.
“We strongly believe that our central thesis of being a technology-driven backer of African SMEs is a powerful lever to accelerate growth, owing to their preponderant role in the larger economy. That’s why Janngo mobilizes both technology and capital, providing solutions to grow their business, win additional markets, further build their capacity, accelerate their growth and enable their market expansion to ultimately become national, regional or pan-African champions,” added Fatoumata Bâ.
In a context where African countries are getting ready to tackle an unprecedented demographic challenge with more than 900 millions of jobs needed to absorb the growing labor pool by 2030, Janngo develops a double bottom-line approach boosting value creation from African start-ups and SMEs while contributing to the economic empowerment of women and youth.
