Cdiscount has announced that it is to pull out of Senegal and Cameroon, citing market conditions and tariff complications as the reason behind its decision.
The announcement was made to the company’s staff in these countries by Florent Mermet, Cdiscount’s Africa director, according to JeuneAfrique.com. Its Ivory Coast operation is, for the time being at least, to remain intact.
The complexity of customs charges, as well as an ongoing problem of counterfeit products, has meant that Cdiscount could not fully capitalise on the growth of e-commerce in these the two African nations, it said.
The ‘Amazon of Africa’, Africa Internet Group, by contrast, achieved a 200-per-cent growth between 2014 and 2015.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
