Konga

Konga is Nigeria's cautionary tale of how path dependence shapes survival even when you read the environment correctly. Launched as a direct competitor to Jumia in Nigeria's e-commerce race, Konga adapted better to African realities - building cash-on-delivery systems, integrating offline retail, and developing local logistics. Yet adaptation alone wasn't enough. In 2018, Zinox Group acquired Konga for roughly $10 million, a fraction of the company's peak valuation, proving that environmental fitness and financial viability are different selection pressures.

Konga's post-acquisition pivot to a composite model - blending online marketplace with physical retail stores - represents genuine phenotypic plasticity. Where Jumia stubbornly maintained Western e-commerce DNA across 14 countries, Konga reshaped itself around Nigerian consumer behavior: customers who want to touch products before buying, who pay cash, who trust a physical storefront more than a website. The biological insight is that Konga identified the right adaptations but lacked the metabolic resources (capital) to sustain operations long enough for the ecosystem to mature. Being well-adapted to an environment that cannot yet support your species is a common extinction pattern in nature. The niche was real; the timing was premature.