Africa’s super app needs to be African

By Ammar Hmid

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About this op-ed’s author:

Ammar Hmid is the founder of Presto, Libya’s largest and most funded startup. He previously co-founded Kayan e-commerce, a Libyan digital marketplace that connects local sellers and buyers. 

Gold rush

There’s a gold rush going on in Africa. Inspired by the successes of Careem (MENA), Gojek (SEA), and Rappi (LATAM) a flurry of tech entrepreneurs have flocked to the continent to capture its grand prize: Africa’s super app. The playbook is as follows: build a delivery-app enabling users to order anything from groceries to medicine. Once users trust you, offer financial services. Then, sell or go public.

Contenders in this quest are numerous. Jumia, Glovo, Yassir… All of them have their coffers filled to the brim, seemingly on their way to crush Presto, the company I founded.

Presto is a delivery app launched and operating in Libya. It’s a tough market, but one where oil wealth grants the 6 million-strong population with relatively high buying power and internet access. That and the absence of foreign competition is what we have capitalized on.

We’ve had to reinvent the food-delivery model. While our European peers waged price wars fueled by seemingly endless VC money, we’ve had to quasi-bootstrap our way to growth and survival. For a simple reason: no VCs were willing to invest in a country they saw more on CNN than on TechCrunch. With some initial funding from local investors, we’ve managed to come a long way.