Jumia has lost one of its largest investors, Baillie Gifford, which has dumped its entire shares.
This follows the exit of Rocket Internet, MTN Group, among others. Baillie Gifford, with over 8.5 million shares as Jumia’s largest institutional investor, has just sold the last of its 18 million shares in Jumia, ending a six-year bet on the firm.
Despite this exit, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citi still appear on Jumia’s roster, yet each has reduced their positions below the 5 percent disclosure line since 2021, according to Finance in Africa.
Baillie Gifford’s new Schedule 13G/A shows its stake in Jumia at 0.0 percent—down from 7.4 percent last November, 9.2 percent in January 2024, and 11 percent at the IPO in 2019. The filing confirms that all 18.1 million ADRs (≈9 percent of the float) have been sold.
Bailie Gifford acquired 17.99 million Jumia shares in 2019, a month after the company’s initial public offering (IPO), for 11.45 percent of the company. The British investment firm that invested in the likes of Tesla, Shopify and MercadoLibre held positions in these companies for over a decade.
This implies that it typically makes long-term bets on companies it deems to have sustainable high growth potential.
With over a century of investing, the firm manages assets for top professional investors, with assets under management of over $225 billion as of 2024. In the six years it held Jumia shares, it largely followed this strategy and made additional investments in the company at key moments where others seemed to be backing out.
From 2020 onward, the investment firm made a SEC 13G/A filing (a disclosure form by investors who intend to hold more than 5 percent of a company without seeking control), indicating that the position was actively managed rather than a “set and forget.” A small top-up in 2021 was reversed in 2022, holding the line at 10 percent.
Despite a brutal 2022, Bailie Gifford added about 1.9 million shares just as Jumia changed CEOs and began a cost-cutting drive. The said cost-cutting drive went on to have mixed results.
In 2024, Baillie Gifford reduced its ownership to 9.2 percent and a further 7.4 percent. With its latest filing from May 5, 2025, the firm appears to have liquidated its entire position.
When Baillie Gifford bought the bulk of its position, Jumia stock was in the mid-$20s. It kept roughly the same share count through the 2020-21 meme-stock spike (when JMIA briefly topped $60).
The final block was dumped in April–early May 2025, around $2.5. Even allowing for a few unreported trims above $5 later in 2024, the firm would still have realised an 80 – 90 percent capital loss on most of the shares it originally bought.
