French businessmen Jeremy Hodara, Sacha Poignonnec step down as co-CEOs of Jumia

French entrepreneurs and business executives Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec have stepped down as co-CEOs of pan-African e-commerce group Jumia Technologies nearly 10 years after founding and growing the firm into a dominant player in the African e-commerce space.

“We thank Jeremy and Sacha for their leadership over the last decade in envisioning and building a company that has become the leading pan-African e-commerce player,” Jumia Supervisory Board Chairman Jonathan Klein said.

Klein announced that Francis Dufay, who has been with Jumia since 2014 and previously served as CEO of one of Jumia’s subsidiary operations in Cote d’Ivoire, has been appointed acting CEO to replace both co-founders.

“We are proud to have built Jumia, pioneering e-commerce on the continent and creating along the way a unique culture and a great platform in which millions of consumers and thousands of sellers find great value,” Hodara and Poignonnec said. “It’s time to hand off the baton to a new team.”

Hodara and Poignonnec’s leadership of the pan-African e-commerce giant comes after the two grew the company into a leading player in the African tech ecosystem across 11 countries and spearheaded its product journey, which now includes JumiaPay, its payment arm, and a logistics platform.

Jumia Logistics, the company’s proprietary logistics business, has a robust network that includes more than 30 warehouses and over 3,000 drop-off and pickup points spread across the company’s 11 country markets.

Following the exit of the two co-founders, Jumia’s Supervisory Board announced the promotion of Jumia Group’s former Chief Financial Officer Antoine Maillet-Mezeray to the role of executive vice president of finance and operations.

As a result of the news of Hodara and Poignonnec’s departure, Jumia’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange dropped 14.3 percent to $4.2, bringing the group’s year-to-date losses to 64.91 percent, with the group’s market cap falling below $420 million at the time of writing.