Comment by chirau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chirau | Hacker News Reader

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An "African company" does not necessarily mean a company registered in Africa or owned by Africans.

When us Africans refer to something as African, it can mean several things. Allow me to call it a FUBU approach. That means "For Us, By Us". It can also mean "For Us or By Us"

This means the entity does not necessarily have to be of African origin, it can just be a result of its focus on Africa. Jumia operates exclusively in Africa, and by virtue of that and our Ubuntu mentality, it is for all intents and purposes, one of us. Though not officially.

When Africans supported the French soccer team last year at the World Cup as "our African team", do you really think Africans are not aware that France is not in Africa and was not representing Africa either. It's just a social construct that gives us something to cheer about, historically we haven't had much.

The same FUBU mentality is also why a lot of Africans considered non-Africans "African heroes". Where I come from, Fidel Castro is an African hero for educating our doctors for free and sending doctors of their own. It's not because he is African. It is simply because of FUBU and Ubuntu.

I think the French soccer team case is an interesting example because the team itself, and its players who are of African heritage, didn't want to consider themselves African. Which is understandable given the long tradition of a civic, race-blind national identity in France.

So there is clearly a conflict there that is less benign than appears. African people from the African continent might believe in a sort of global 'Africanness', while others clearly don't share that attitude. (And I don't just mind on a individual level, but also a cultural one).

This could be seen when Noah on the Daily Show ridiculed the whole discussion by declaring it innocent or backward, which ended with a quite heated exchange with the French ambassador.

The Ubuntu mentality is not unlike the American mentality which often mixes ethnic origin with nationality, but in many other countries this is not so, and an explicit race-blindness is seen as a big achievement.That the French soccer team did not really get a say of their own in this affair and was simply declared to be African by mostly American commentators seemingly, is somewhat problematic.

I am afraid you're making quite a statement there on behalf of all Africans...This African completely disagrees :)

And that is totally fine. I am sure my opinion does not represent 100% of Africans.

Exactly, so do I

I also forgot to mention in my original comment that Jumia DOES actually have African founders.

The company was originally founded as Kasuwa by Tunde Kehinde(Nigeria) and Raphael Afaedor(Ghana) but for legal reasons had to change its name to Jumia. It is shortly after that that they received funding from Rocket Internet who brought on financing and two other German co-founders for the new entity that was Jumia.

The two African founders have since left the company, though.

To be honest. It was set up by Germans with Africans as the face in order to easily penetrate the African market. PR everywhere.

Why would Africans setup a company and incoorporate it in Germany and call it a Nigerian company

To attract capital of course.

"Money can be raised for Africa, not in Africa."

Most venture capital is still still skeptical of pumping money directly into sub-Saharan Africa and would rather do it via a company registered in a well regulated area.

It should not come to you as a surprise that most of the promising, and/or funded African startups are incorporated either in Delaware or California.

Initiatives like Stripe Atlas are there specifically for these two purposes: 1) To allow foreign entities to do business in the US 2) To allow foreign entities to raise capital in the US, regardless of their primary market of operation.

The second is testimony to why African startups would rather incorporate elsewhere. Funding pools in Africa are small and foreign investment in hesitant, so any serious African startup will, statistically, have better chances incorporating elsewhere.

Doesn’t FUBU represent the very tribalism that has contributed to some of the dramatic troubles within Africa? Do people have pride in being from a specific continent? Given the vast diversity of Africa, I am not sure I understand the mindset. Algerians are far more different from Kenyans than Mexicans are from Argentinians. Would a Tunisian success be celebrated by Botswanans? I am going to plead ignorance — I genuinely don’t understand.

As far as Fidel being an African hero, we can forget another hero to many Africans: George W. Bush: he did more to stem the tide of AIDS in African than any other non-African leader.

100% agreed. I'm African. But the real order of my identity is Asante (by birth and heritage), Ghanaian by British demarcation, African by continent. The tie gets looser at every step of the way. No, I don't have or share an African identity. I won't celebrate a Kenyan breakthrough (assuming I hear about it) the same way I'll celebrate, say, an Indian breakthrough in malaria medication. This FUBU, Ubuntu, global Africanness that the OP alluded to doesn't exist in reality. It's a pity.

As a converse example, Apple operates globally, no one is going to mistake them for not being an American company, let's not make excuses for what can arguably be described as a usurp on African identity.

From the standpoint of a corporate entity, they are not incorporated in Africa nor have substantial corporate representation in Africa. Everything else is secondary.

As the author points out Coca-Cola has immense presence in Africa, and is definitely a far more recognizable brand than Jumia even with current exclusivity, that does not translate into being an African company

Neither Coca Cola nor Apple are exclusive to one region. Jumia's WHOLE operation is in Africa. That is a very important difference, don't overlook it

Well, consider a white-owned company catering to the African american market. That would not be rightly called an "african-american" company, nor would it be an "african american success story", etc.

It's just PR presenting it as such.

I think this comment misses the point by speaking of Ubuntu in the face of the incompatible idea of capitalism. The company is not an African company in the sense that it is not owned (and thus likely not operated) by Africans. Africa is almost entirely owned by foreign entities in the most exploitative fashion. Ubuntu is a enlightening concept of fundamental good and sharing but it should not be used as a tool to allow foreign interests, who follow no such concept, to take more than they are giving back. I am really skeptical as to whether you are really an African. If you are an African I would go as far as to say your "Ubuntu mentality" is not an Ubuntu mentality at all but a neo-colonial one.

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