Maad is Revolutionizing Francophone Africa’s FMCG Market—And Empowering Women Along the Way
- Jabulile Sonya Ngwenya
- Mar 18
- 4 min read
Francophone Africa is one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, and a region many investors are showing more interest in. Jessica Long, co-founder and president at Maad, one of Francophone Africa’s biggest B2B e-commerce players, shares her thoughts on International Women’s Day with AfricArena’s Jabulile Sonya Ngwenya.
Maad is revolutionizing the FMCG market in Francophone Africa, digitalizing this sector, breaking boundaries and enabling seamless cross-border trade. Jessica says, “Maad is modernizing food distribution in Senegal. We deliver grocery products to over 10,000 small shops each month, via a mobile application that we use to take orders and coordinate a fleet of 50 trucks. Maad has raised US$3.2 million from Pan-African and US venture capitalists.”
She adds with a smile, as she recounts some of her startup’s accomplishments, “We've been recognized by Orange Fab and the DER in Senegal. I personally am a 2024 Cartier Fellow.”
Reflecting on her startup journey to date, she shares that one accomplishment she is incredibly proud of is how she and her co-founders started Maad in a 20m² garage and a few palettes of Coca Cola products. “We knocked on shops' doors and hoped they would buy products from us. A couple years later, we moved into a 10,000m² distribution center, operating a fleet of 40 trucks and making deliveries to more than 1,000 traditional retailers a day. I personally sourced and designed every warehouse we used, I automated all of our internal processes, I built our mobile field ops application from scratch. There is tremendous satisfaction in seeing my own efforts come to fruition in such a big way.” Maad’s story is just one of many, proving that out of humble beginnings come great things.
As a female founder operating in a heavily male dominated industry that comes with its own set of challenges, Jessica tells AfricArena that “International Women's Day is a time to celebrate women's accomplishments. Too often, women hesitate to put themselves at the centre of the conversation. Shining a spotlight on women's work helps everyone see how much women are contributing to our professional worlds.”
Thinking about how she has overcome challenges and perceptions of being a woman in a world thought to belong to men, Jessica shares how she has to remind herself to keep going and shares, “I constantly have to remind myself that it's normal to project confidence about initiatives where you're still working out the details. I am often surprised by how easily male colleagues can assure others that they have everything under control - when in reality, they are dealing with the same levels of uncertainty that I am.”
Happy to talk about gender diversity, Jessica emphasizes that conversations about gender diversity are important in the marketplace, especially in one as diverse as Francophone Africa’s marketplace. “Gender diversity means proactively making space for diverse groups of people in decision-making processes. It means being sensitive to who's speaking up and who's not,” she says. She adds, it also means “being thoughtful in our recruiting to ensure that the candidate pool includes many different kinds of people.”
Given that the current funding climate seems to be skewed in favour of male founders, Jessica says she would like to see investors change the questions they ask female founders in the pitching rooms to ensure more funding is disbursed to female founders.
I want to hear investors ask female founders “What percentage of clients or your team are women?”
The reason for this, says Jessica is because “I work in two male-dominated industries, namely logistics and tech, I am surrounded by men all the time. Investors sometimes use gender balance as a proxy for evaluating respect for gender diversity. They assume that since we do not have a gender-balanced workplace or client base, we do not value gender diversity. This could not be farther from the truth - and the gender parity of our senior management team is a good testament to this. We need women’s participation across all industries, especially those that have historically been dominated by men.”
On the flip side, she shares that one question she would like investors to stop asking so often is “walk me through how you built confidence that you can achieve the next 1-2 years’ milestones in your business. What will achieving this unlock for your company’s potential?”
Jessica says instead of this question, “I want investors to ask for concrete near-term plans that show explosive growth and potential. Then I want them to understand how these achievable, medium-term objectives unlock paradigm-shifting outcomes. Basically, I want more bottom-up thinking, rather than top-down storytelling.”
Jessica ends by sharing that if she could change one thing to ensure future generations of female founders are successful, it is this: “I hope future generations of female founders realize that they don't have to act like men to enjoy wild success as founders. Female founders return more money per dollar invested than men do. We need to embrace what women have to bring to the table, especially in an increasingly socially-connected, complex world. The future is female.”
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