When fake vendors look real: Inside Nigeria’s food delivery loophole
Impostors have found a place on food delivery platforms and stricter measure have to be put in place to flush them out and rebuild consumer trust.
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Ahmed Galadima is 30, single, and lives in Agege, on the outskirts of Lagos. Far enough from the commercial centre of Victoria Island that his daily commute is practically a second job.<br />
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As early as 5am every weekday morning, he is out of bed, chasing the traffic before the traffic catches him. By the time he gets home at night, he is too tired to cook and too hungry to wait.<br />
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Respite came through a colleague, via a restaurant he would never have found on his own, buried inside a food delivery app. It sent him lunch at the office and dinner at the door. For months, it was the kind of arrangement that made a hard routine bearable.<br />
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Then one afternoon, the food arrived wrong. The packaging and taste were significantly different from what they used to be. He ate it anyway, but paid for that mistake with a night of food poisoning.<br />
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Galadima has not ordered food online since.<br />
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The restaurant lost a loyal customer. The platform lost one, too. And Galadima, for his part, lost the one convenience that made his long days a little shorter. This is what happens when trust is broken; all the parties involved lose something in the process.<br />
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A recent investigation by Techpoint Africa showed that Nigeria’s food delivery platforms have a loophole that impostors might have been exploiting. The weak Know Your Business (KYB) checks on the platforms enable fraudulent entities to impersonate credible restaurants, place orders, and have them delivered.<br />
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Safety and health concerns that need immediate attention<br />
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This identified gap raises numerous questions: what happens to the many credible businesses on the platforms? How are they sure their brand images aren’t being tarnished by impostors?<br />
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Also, there’s concern about the millions of Nigerians who rely on these food delivery platforms for their daily needs. <br />
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Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer<br />
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Techpoint Digest<br />
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