Janngo, Africa’s #1 social startup studio, launches Jexport to accelerate access to regional & international market for African SMEs

December 11, 2018 BusinessTrumpet

Through Jexport (www.Jexport.ci), its turnkey import-export platform, Janngo (www.Janngo.africa) brings a solution to Small and Medium Enterprises competitiveness challenges in Ivory Coast in order to democratize export and accelerate their integration into regional and global value chains. In a bid to address their challenges in a more systematic and holistic way, Janngo closes a strategic partnership with Agence Côte d’Ivoire PME (http://AgenceCIPme.ci) to further improve access to market, capital and capacity for Ivorian SMEs.

Charm el-Cheikh (Egypt), December 10, 2018 – In the wake of Africa 2018 (https://bit.ly/2ATioo7) and The Intra-African Trade Fair (https://bit.ly/2N0GsbN), Janngo announces the launch of Jexport (www.Jexport.ci) in Ivory Coast, a digital platform enabling on one hand, SMEs and local economic players to export worldwide and at the best price; and on the other hand, freight forwarders and transporters to massify their volumes, reduce their costs and optimise their capacity on key corridors. This launch materializes the emergence of an ecosystem supporting Ivorian SMEs through the closing of a strategic partnership with Agence Côte d’Ivoire PME (http://AgenceCIPme.ci), created in July 2018 under the high patronage of H.E.M. Souleymane DIARRASSOUBA, Minister of Trade, Industry and SMEs Promotion.

An online platform for import-export enabling Ivorian SMEs to ship at the best price and logistics players to massify their volume and optimize their transport capacity

Six months after successfully raising its seed funding, Janngo launches in Ivory Coast its first online platform www.Jexport.ci bridging access to market and competitiveness gaps, 2 major challenges faced by Ivorian SMEs willing to sell their products abroad.

“Food waste represents more than 40% of the whole production worldwide. The situation is equally dire in Africa where, contrary to the developed countries where the waste occurs downstream of the value chain, we face most challenges upstream in particular in terms of handling, transportation and distribution. As a result, we waste 250 Kg of food per capita annually with terrible economic, social and environmental consequences. If we add to that the extremely high cost of moving goods in Africa representing up to 75% of merchandise costs vs 6-7% on average worldwide, it becomes crucial to turnaround the situation. Today, our farmers and local producers severely suffer from prohibitive transport costs which drives them in some cases to resort to sell off their crop at ridiculously low prices or even worse to see them rot on their stems.” says Fatoumata Bâ, Founder & CEO of Janngo.

In this context, Jexport online freight marketplace provides high value added services and enables SMEs and other economic players in Ivory Coast to (i) trade globally and accelerate their top line growth, (ii) find best prices regarding their transport needs, optimize their costs and improve their profitability, (iii) save time and improve their operational efficiency, (iv) improve their decision making with an all-in-one reporting and management tool, (v) manage their legal and compliance needs on all the transport value chain through an integrated solution.

To match this growing demand in logistics services, Jexport partners with the best freight forwarders, carriers and other logistics players enabling them to massify their volumes, generate new leads online, optimize their transport capacity, broaden their sales & marketing reach and improve their customer satisfaction. Notably, Jexport enables them to optimize their existing transport corridors to avoid returning empty containers, planes or trucks, while offering new transport corridors to meet the additional demand.

The emergence of an ecosystem supporting Ivorian SMEs through the signing of a strategic partnership with Agence Côte d’Ivoire PME

“In our countries, the logistics and transport chains of our manufacturing SMEs are lagging behind those of their international competitors. By building export capacity, this partnership is a concrete response to the challenges faced by the Ivorian sector in terms of productivity and competitiveness; which is a lever of the emergence process of our country, Côte d’Ivoire” explains Salimou. Bamba, Managing Director of Agence Côte d’Ivoire PME.

An online platform for import-export enabling Ivorian SMEs to ship at the best price and logistics players to massify their volume and optimize their transport capacity

The emergence of an ecosystem supporting Ivorian SMEs through the signing of a strategic partnership with Agence Côte d’Ivoire PME

In Ivory Coast, SMEs generate nearly 20% of the GDP and face fragmented markets, prohibitive operational costs, unintegrated value chains with limited access to international market, operational capacity issues and limited access to financing to support their growth. However, they represent nearly 98% of companies, 85% of jobs and are facing unique opportunities in a context of growing domestic market, renewed dynamic of regional integration and increasing demand from international markets for African products

Technology, a driver of economic development through accelerating the ability to trade cross-border and grow both intra-African trade and Africa’s share in global trade

According to UNCTAD, the share of intra-regional trade in Africa stalled at 12% in 2013, 5 times less than Europe with an average of 60%. This translates into a huge opportunity for the African continent to trade more and better with itself, as recently advocated by Fatoumata Bâ in a paper explaining Janngo’s thesis on this essential matter “West Africa facing the challenge of regional integration: economic realities and opportunities offered by digital convergence” (https://bit.ly/2EfRDgg).

With the recent launch of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), Africa is ahead of an historic opportunity : bridging Africa’s 54 markets fragmentation gap to create a single and huge market that will represent nearly 2.2 billion inhabitants and $29 000 billion of GDP by 2050. In Europe, it is estimated that the creation of a single market generated between €250 and €750 billion of GDP since inception, which represents up to 3 times the GDP of a country like Malaysia in 2017. In Africa, the endogenous growth opportunity through the increase of intra-African trade is coupled with a massive exogenous opportunity through global value chains integration.

« With less than 3% of share in global trade, our continent remains a marginal player. Meanwhile, cross-border ecommerce is steadily growing and projected to hit $1000 billion by 2020. Therefore, it is fundamental to redouble efforts to bring innovative solutions to answer the pressing needs in terms of access to international market and be positioned to claim our fair share of the global trade cake, capture related opportunities and all positive externalities in terms of economic development and job creation. At Janngo, it is the core of our thesis and with Jexport, we are laying our first stone towards achieving this goal.” concludes Fatoumata Bâ, Founder & CEO of Janngo.

About Janngo:

Janngo (www.Janngo.africa), Africa’s #1 Social Start-up Studio, builds, grows and invests in pan-African digital champions with proven business models and inclusive social impact. We build digital ecosystems in high growth sectors by providing business support and digital platforms allowing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to scale and contribute to the economic empowerment of youth and women through job creation and capacity building. www.Janngo.africa

About Jexport:

Jexport (www.Jexport.ci) is a portfolio company of Janngo, Africa’s #1 Social Start-up Studio. Jexport enables professionals to access to regional and international markets through an all-in-one logistic solution digitized providing them high value-added services to export and import their products from and to Africa, while accelerating their businesses, increasing their profitability, improving their operational efficiency, enhancing their customer experiences and accompanying them to act in compliance with legal standards and regulatory conformity. www.Jexport.ci

About Agence PME-CI:

AGENCE Côte d’Ivoire PME” (http://AgenceCIPme.ci) was created by the law n ° 2014-140 of March 24th, 2014 orienting the national policy of SMEs in its article 11. On December 7th, 2016, by decree n ° 2016-1120, the Government has determined the attributions, the organization and the functioning of this Agency, whose mission is to promote Ivorian SMEs and to contribute to the operational implementation of the SME development strategy, in particular by:

• helping in the creation of SMEs;

• improving SME access to finance and market;

• improving the business climate for SMEs;

• and by developing the entrepreneurial culture and innovation.