African shoppers buy Walmart online through package forwarders

African shoppers were buying Walmart-listed goods online even in countries where the retailer had no physical stores, relying on package-forwarding firms to bridge the gap between global checkout pages and local delivery. The model turned a simple product listing into a cross-border logistics chain, with intermediaries handling addresses, payments, consolidation and final-mile delivery.

In Senegal, Afrety showed how the system worked. The startup gave customers delivery addresses at warehouses in France, the United States and China, then consolidated multiple purchases and repackaged them for shipment to West Africa. Founded in 2018 from informal air-traveler networks between France and Senegal, Afrety moved four to five metric tons by air and two to three containers by sea each week. In Dakar, it used motorbikes and vans equipped with GPS to get packages to customers who often lacked formal street addresses.

Payment was part of the workaround. Customers without bank cards could pay through mobile-money accounts that were topped up with cash at kiosks, a setup that fit the region’s heavy reliance on phone-based financial services. In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money has become a major part of commerce, with 1.75 billion registered accounts and 435 million monthly active accounts, giving platforms like Afrety a payment rail that traditional card systems often could not match.

The bigger marketplace opportunity has drawn larger logistics players too. Aramex acquired MyUS in 2022 and also operates Shop and Ship, a service that reaches many African markets. That competition underscores how package forwarding has become a business in its own right, not just a workaround for online shoppers hunting for imported goods.

The trend also points to Walmart’s broader digital reach. The company’s brand was reaching African consumers online before most of the continent had any store presence, and Walmart-branded stores opened in Johannesburg in 2025. Amazon also launched its first online marketplace in South Africa in 2024, putting more pressure on regional platforms such as Takealot and showing how global retailers are building African demand through both storefronts and digital channels.

Customs duties were paid on arrival, sending revenue to local governments even when the goods started their journey in France, the United States or China. For Walmart, the pattern showed that brand reach in Africa was not limited by store count alone. It depended on whether the company’s products could move through a growing web of forwarders, fintech tools and last-mile delivery systems that made cross-border shopping workable.