Moulaye Taboure, CEO and Co-Founder of ANKA, has announced that Afrikrea, the marketplace, is shutting down after 10 years of operation.
He made this known in a video on social media. According to him, “This is the end of Afrikrea … Your support has meant everything, so thank you for 11 years of love, sharing and community. Don’t miss out on this important update, hit play now and uncover the details!”
This is what he had to say in the video:
This is the end of our marketplace that gathered over 1.5 million followers across social media and across the world.. but more importantly that showed that black people can come together and buy African culture to the tune of $50 million of transactions in 175 countries.
But that is, that is not enough and I want to be clear it’s not a lack of love.. like we, our traffic increased over three times to do more than 1,000,000 visitors per month. And we even managed to have 50% of our sellers selling for the first time online and for the first time outside of Africa.
So, there is a lot of wins but that is not enough to be sustainable. There was inflation cost, rising payment issues, like so many issues that I cannot share in this video, but we really wanted to thank you for this 10 years. Afrikrea is over!
Created by ANKA an Ivorian SaaS e-commerce platform, Afrikrea is a marketplace for African-made, handcrafted fashion, art, and fabrics.
In 2023, ANKA raised $13.5 million in funding which it said it would be using to enhance product development and expand its services, with a primary focus on key markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, and the U.S.
It would seem that though ANKA has shut down the marketplace, it might pivot into other related businesses.
………developing story.
