Forward-thinking innovations in Africa are what keeps the continent ahead of the game in leading the future for us all.

Thanks to entrepreneur Feleg Tsegaye, Africa’s momentum in the food space is seeing an uptick after launching Deliver Addis, Ethiopia’s first online restaurant delivery company, Face2Face Africa reports.

Tsegaye — who was born to exiled Ethiopian parents in the U.S. — moved to Ethiopia when he was 24-years-old to begin his ambitious business endeavor.

He set up his Addis Ababa-based company in 2015 as both a platform and an app to deliver takeout restaurant food, groceries, and beverages, as well as flowers and books.

According to How We Made It in Africa, Tsegaye’s reason for creating Deliver Addis was because he didn’t want to learn how to cook, but the mission grew to be much greater than that.

For Tsegaye, launching this new venture was not only a way to generate new jobs in his home country, but also change the structure of dining culture for Ethiopia as a whole.

“What really prompted me to pursue this was the fact that we were creating a completely new industry that did not exist in Ethiopia,” he told How We Made It in Africa. “It’s about getting customers what they want in the convenience of their homes and offices. It’s also about generating business for small and medium enterprises – like restaurants that cannot afford space or a good location – and creating jobs for young people as back-office staff or drivers.”

Face2Face Africa reports businesses across Africa that are being operated solely online are quickly becoming more popular with consumers. This is largely attributed to the spread of Internet connectivity across the continent.

Being a pioneer in such an Internet-focused part of the e-commerce sector wasn’t an easy feat for Tsegaye in Ethiopia.

Coupled with power outages, absence of addresses, and the country’s Internet penetration being low at the time of his company’s launch, this business model proved to be quite the challenge.

“Our first internet shutdown was when I was on a flight to the US,” he recalled to How We Made It in Africa. “As an e-commerce business, that’s pretty much the worst possible thing that can happen – and I wasn’t even there when it happened.”

Nonetheless, he managed to prevail and now controls a big share of the market.

According to Face2Face Africa, Tsegaye secured additional funding from the Impact Angel Network back in June to increase Deliver Addis’ capacity and efficiency to introduce new products and services while expanding its market share.

As the company has continued to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsegaye has since expanded Deliver Addis’ platform to include an online marketplace, which allows Ethiopian consumers to shop for groceries and other essential items online.

For more information about Deliver Addis, visit its website.

Ethiopia

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