![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/kariakoo-market-dar-es-salaam.jpg\")
Kariakoo Street Market in Dar-es-salaam<\/p>\nIn many parts of Africa, dysfunction is the norm.<\/p>\n
That sounds controversial, but it\u2019s not news to anyone on the ground.<\/p>\n
Think about it:<\/p>\n
About 70 percent of Africans self-medicate without seeing a doctor.<\/p>\n
Eight out of ten South Africans still use cash for everyday transactions, despite having many digital options.<\/p>\n
And over 600 million Africans still have no access to electricity.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting is that over the last ten years, innovation has been rising steadily on the continent.<\/p>\n
Startups have built solutions to many problems, from healthcare to fintech and power.<\/p>\n
Yet, the dysfunction persists.<\/p>\n
To see why, let\u2019s take a walk through one of Africa\u2019s most important \u201cproducts\u201d that nobody ever designed.<\/p>\n
The market that wasn\u2019t \u201cbuilt\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a market in Nigeria that\u2019s the size of a small town.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Onitsha Market.<\/p>\n
The Onitsha Market, the largest market in West Africa.<\/p>\n
Here, hundreds of thousands of traders set up shop selling all kinds of things: textiles, shoes, food items, car spare parts, and even electronics.<\/p>\n
And every year, about USD 5 billion worth of goods are sold here.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s just one problem: it\u2019s chaos.<\/p>\n
Onitsha Market wasn\u2019t planned.<\/p>\n
It emerged from an organic sprawl of stalls, shacks and improvised structures piled on top of each other.<\/p>\n
Walking through it feels like crossing an environmental minefield:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s overcrowded. <\/p>\n
On busy days, traffic hits 100,000 people.<\/p>\n
Drains are blocked, with refuse dumps right next to food stalls.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so dense that multiple studies have flagged it as a serious fire and health risk.<\/p>\n
And Onitsha is not a one\u2011off.<\/p>\n
Across the continent, open markets are where trade, transactions and dysfunction collide:<\/p>\n
Gikomba Market, a major market in Nairobi, has seen more than 15 major fires between 2015 and 2022<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, Ariaria Market saw 70 percent of its stalls using illegal electrical wiring, increasing the risks of fires.<\/p>\n
Kariakoo Street Market in Dar-es-salaam<\/p>\n
And in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania\u2019s capital, 40 percent of cars can\u2019t move around during peak hours at the Kariakoo market, due to overcrowding.<\/p>\n
Fires are also common at Kariakoo, the 24\/7 busy center.<\/p>\n
Anyway, all these markets are hazardous, congested, and wildly inefficient.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also indispensable.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re how goods actually move.<\/p>\n
So, 16 years ago, a group of founders tried to put this mess online.<\/p>\n
When infrastructure isn\u2019t enough<\/p>\n
You know this story.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Jumia launched with a clear promise: to help everyday Africans buy goods via the internet.<\/p>\n
And on paper, it made perfect sense.<\/p>\n
No more unsafe, overcrowded markets. <\/p>\n
No more hours lost in traffic. <\/p>\n
And access to more products than any physical stall could hold.<\/p>\n
If you could buy from your phone instead of fighting your way through a crowded market, why wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
But more than a decade later, the numbers tell a different story.<\/p>\n
In most of Africa, e-commerce makes up less than 3 percent of all commerce.<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, Jumia\u2019s biggest market, e\u2011commerce makes up just about 6 percent of retail-level sales. Jumia\u2019s cut is only a slice of that.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more revealing is how much Jumia had to build just to get here:<\/p>\n
A continent\u2011wide logistics network because public postal systems were under\u2011capacity.<\/p>\n
JumiaPay, its own payments layer because existing rails weren\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n
A huge marketing machine to convince customers to trust buying what they couldn\u2019t touch.<\/p>\n
Jumia is not unique.<\/p>\n
In Africa, startups are often forced to build not just a product, but the surrounding infrastructure: logistics, payment rails, education, and even regulation\u2011adjacent processes.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they succeed.<\/p>\n
But often, after all that work, the old, \u201cbroken\u201d way of doing things still wins.<\/p>\n
Policy has the same problem.<\/p>\n
Nigeria\u2019s cashless policy was first rolled out in 2007. <\/p>\n
Yet, it took nearly a decade before financial inclusion started meaningfully rising. Even today, cash is still everywhere.<\/p>\n
So, if:<\/p>\n
Building the solution isn\u2019t enough,<\/p>\n
Building the infrastructure isn\u2019t enough,<\/p>\n
And raising capital doesn\u2019t automatically shift behavior\u2026<\/p>\n
What actually moves the needle?<\/p>\n
Underneath the chaos, there\u2019s a quieter force calling the shots.<\/p>\n
The real infrastructure: trust<\/p>\n
In 2023, Africa\u2019s online payments market generated about $15 billion from 47 billion transactions.<\/p>\n
Big number. Until you realise that\u2019s still only around 5% of all payment activity.<\/p>\n
Cash still dominates.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Because cash has a superpower: finality.<\/p>\n
Once you hand over notes, the transaction is done. <\/p>\n
No failed transfers. No network downtime. No reversed debits with no explanation. <\/p>\n
No \u201cpending\u201d status that never clears.<\/p>\n
In a world of unreliable systems, cash is the simplest form of trust.<\/p>\n
In South Africa, cash still accounts for more than half of all payments. <\/p>\n
This is in a country with world\u2011class banking and plenty of digital options.<\/p>\n
Scratch the surface, and it gets clearer: Africa is a low\u2011trust environment.<\/p>\n
In one survey, only about 14 percent of Nigerians said, \u201cmost people can be trusted\u201d.<\/p>\n
A study by Klasha and TechCabal found a major trust gap between African consumers and businesses.<\/p>\n
Customers fear hidden fees, poor quality, and impossible refunds<\/p>\n
\u00a0Businesses fear chargebacks, fraud, and regulatory uncertainty<\/p>\n
When systems fail, people don\u2019t switch to \u201cthe future.\u201d<\/p>\n
They switch back to what works, even if it\u2019s dangerous, inefficient, or technically worse.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why:<\/p>\n
Onitsha Market remains a massive economic engine despite its chaos.<\/p>\n
And so is the Kariakoo in dar-es-Salaam where traders from as far as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and DR Congo flock on daily basis<\/p>\n
Two\u2011thirds of banked customers still say they trust traditional banks over fintechs.<\/p>\n
Millions of people on a continent with low health literacy still self\u2011medicate, despite the risks.<\/p>\n
In this context, dysfunction isn\u2019t just a bug.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a service.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a rough, informal operating system that people know how to navigate, because they\u2019ve had to, for decades.<\/p>\n
And for a new product to win, it\u2019s not enough to be more modern.<\/p>\n
It has to be more trusted than the existing dysfunction.<\/p>\n
The good news? Some players have already shown what that looks like.<\/p>\n
Trust me, bro<\/p>\n
Some African products have managed to cross the trust barrier.<\/p>\n
Like M-PESA.<\/p>\n
When Safaricom launched M\u2011Pesa in Kenya in 2007, it didn\u2019t ask people to believe in an entirely new system.<\/p>\n
Instead, it tapped into something they already trusted: cooperative savings groups and community lending circles.<\/p>\n
M\u2011Pesa slotted into that familiar mental model:<\/p>\n
Agents were often local shopkeepers whom people already knew.<\/p>\n
The interface used USSD, which was familiar to mobile phone users.<\/p>\n
The logic (send, receive, store value) felt like a convenient upgrade to the status quo, not a replacement.<\/p>\n
M\u2011Pesa borrowed trust from Safaricom\u2019s brand, local agents, and the social capital of savings groups.<\/p>\n
Within a few years, it became the default way to send money, pay bills, and run small businesses.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Paystack.<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, Paystack didn\u2019t set out to transform African payments in one go.<\/p>\n
It focused on one painful problem: online card payments that just didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
The company built a plug\u2011and\u2011play payment gateway that made \u201ccard transaction successful\u201d feel normal:<\/p>\n
Easy integration for merchants.<\/p>\n
Clear, human support for businesses.<\/p>\n
Reliable dashboards, invoices, and transaction records.<\/p>\n
By helping merchants understand and trust every inflow, Paystack reduced the anxiety around money \u201cdisappearing\u201d into the system.<\/p>\n
Today, more than 400,000 businesses use Paystack because it makes digital payments feel less risky than the old way, not more.<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, Fez Delivery goes beyond just picking up and dropping off parcels.<\/p>\n
It adds specific trust\u2011building features:<\/p>\n
Safe lockers for customers who won\u2019t be home.<\/p>\n
Live parcel tracking so customers can see exactly where their delivery is.<\/p>\n
Clear communication when something goes wrong.<\/p>\n
Each feature is aimed at a particular trust\u2011breaker: failed deliveries, stolen packages, opaque processes.<\/p>\n
To the average customer, Fez isn\u2019t just \u201cfaster logistics tech.\u201d It\u2019s \u201cmy stuff is less likely to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n
These companies have one thing in common: they treat trust as a part of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n
And after a while, customer behaviour tips over.<\/p>\n
Innovation becomes safer than the old way.<\/p>\n
And dysfunction becomes unattractive.<\/p>\n
Beating dysfunction at its game<\/p>\n
If you zoom all the way out, the biggest competitor for most African startups is not another startup.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s dysfunction:<\/p>\n
The open market that\u2019s a fire hazard, but always has what you need.<\/p>\n
The risky cash economy that always settles instantly.<\/p>\n
And the local chemist shop that\u2019s cheap and always available.<\/p>\n
Call it Dysfunction as a Service: a network of improvised, informal systems that deliver just enough value to beat fragile new ones.<\/p>\n
To win against DaaS, your product doesn\u2019t just have to be better; it has to be trusted and predictable.<\/p>\n
And all of Africa\u2019s most successful products have trust as a feature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In many parts of Africa, dysfunction is the norm. That sounds controversial, but it\u2019s not news to anyone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[152],"class_list":{"0":"post-23374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tanzania","8":"tag-tanzania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}