Over 6,000 vendors in Nigeria have generated ₦71 billion ($42 million) in revenue through Glovo since the on-demand delivery platform launched in the country in 2021, the company revealed at its Future of Commerce 2025 summit in Lagos on Wednesday. The milestone highlights the company’s growth in Nigeria’s competitive e-commerce market and its ambitions to expand beyond food into a broader retail marketplace.
The vendors represent 13% of the 45,000 African businesses supported by Glovo across Africa. Since launching on the continent in 2018, Glovo has invested €200 million and built operations in 75 cities across six countries—Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Uganda.
In Nigeria, Glovo operates in 11 cities, with Lagos driving the majority of its activity. Glovo’s 2,400 riders across Nigeria earn two to three times the national minimum wage of ₦70,000 ($43), comparable to Chowdeck’s reported earnings for its 10,000-rider network. At the summit, Glovo awarded an Abuja-based rider for completing 14,000 deliveries since 2021.
“We’re fostering a tech-driven, inclusive marketplace that scales Nigerian SMEs through data, logistics, and financial tools,” Lamide Akinola, Glovo Nigeria’s General Manager, said at the event. The company exited Egypt and Ghana due to profitability challenges, a move echoing Jumia Food’s withdrawal from the latter amid economic headwinds.
The platform reported a 76% surge in quick-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2024, fueled by diversification into non-food items like electronics, beauty products, and pharmaceuticals, with 20% of users now purchasing beyond food. This aligns with global and local trends of food delivery startups like Chowdeck and HeyFood evolving into marketplaces for electronics, medicines, and other essentials.
A notable shift toward digital payments saw cash transactions drop from 88% of Glovo orders in 2021 to 39% today, a 55% decline, aligning with Nigeria’s cashless economy push. Unlike competitors such as Chowdeck and FoodCourt, which have restricted cash payments to curb losses from uncompleted orders or driver fraud, Glovo’s continued acceptance of cash may reflect a strategy to build user trust.
At the summit, Glovo also unveiled its Yellow Effect Report, which claims the platform has enabled €1 billion in economic value for 45,000 African businesses—90% of them SMEs—between 2020 and 2024. In fireside chats and panel discussions, executives from Chicken Republic, Burger King, Sweet Sensation, and financial providers like Moniepoint and WEMA Bank discussed SME financing. Popular vendors and virtual kitchen owners like 500Chow, Toasties, and FireWood Jollof shared how essential the platform has been for the distribution of their product by solving the pain of logistics.
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