Despite successive closures that have cast a chill over the entire e-commerce market in French-speaking Africa, some players are standing out.
This is the case for Afrikrea, a startup dedicated to African fashion. After raising €1 million in 2020, the young company is once again boosting its development with a second round of funding of $6.2 million in a pre-Series A financing round.
A marketplace launched by Moulaye Tabouré and Abdoul Kadry Diallo in 2016 in Paris and now based in Abidjan, Afrikrea connects African designers specializing in fashion and crafts with the rest of the world, enabling them to reach a wider African diaspora.
Available in French and English, the startup now has several thousand listings, 33,466 users from 45 countries, and recorded more than €1 million in transactions in January 2018 (source: Afrikrea White Paper).
This development has been accompanied by a change in brand identity, with Afrikrea becoming Anka, the new brand name for an entire ecosystem deployed by the founders. Anka is now an all-in-one product that allows users to sell, ship, and receive payments worldwide.