Lori Systems is a freight logistics technology company co-founded in 2016 by Josh Sandler, an American entrepreneur, and Jean-Claude Homawoo, a Ghanaian-Togolese technologist. Headquartered in Nairobi, Lori built a digital platform connecting cargo owners - manufacturers, distributors, commodity traders - with truck owners and drivers, aiming to reduce the inefficiency and opacity that characterised African freight transport.
The founding thesis was grounded in a striking market failure: African freight costs were among the highest in the world, accounting for 50 to 75 percent of the retail price of goods in some corridors, compared to 6 to 8 percent in developed markets. Trucks frequently returned empty after delivering cargo, driver utilisation rates were low, and pricing was opaque - determined by brokers and intermediaries who captured margins without adding value. Lori's platform aimed to match supply and demand algorithmically, optimise routes to reduce empty return trips, and provide transparent pricing.
The company launched in Kenya's Northern Corridor - the logistics route running from Mombasa port through Nairobi to Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo - one of East Africa's busiest and most commercially significant trade corridors. Lori signed agreements with major cargo owners including mining companies, agricultural commodity traders, and FMCG distributors who moved thousands of tonnes of goods along these routes annually. The platform allowed shippers to post loads, receive quotes from verified transporters, track shipments via GPS, and process payments digitally.
Lori raised approximately $50 million in equity and debt financing from investors including Imperial Logistics (a South African transport conglomerate), Hillhouse Investment, and Crystal Ventures. The Imperial partnership was particularly strategic - it gave Lori access to one of Africa's largest logistics networks and provided operational credibility with enterprise clients who were sceptical of tech-first approaches to freight.
The company expanded beyond Kenya into Nigeria, Uganda, and other West African markets, reflecting the pan-African ambitions that characterised many Silicon Savannah startups of the era. However, cross-border freight in Africa involved navigating different regulatory regimes, customs procedures, road conditions, and security environments in each country - complexities that were difficult to abstract into software. The platform could match truck to cargo, but it could not fix the physical bottlenecks at border crossings, the corruption at weighbridges, or the poor road infrastructure that added cost and unpredictability to every journey.
Lori's experience illustrated both the potential and the limits of applying technology platforms to African infrastructure challenges. The freight market was undeniably large and inefficient, but the inefficiency was rooted in physical and institutional constraints - port congestion, road quality, regulatory fragmentation - that software alone could not resolve. Companies like Lori and Sendy discovered that logistics technology in Africa required not just a good platform but also deep operational involvement in a sector where the offline reality was far more complex than the digital layer sitting on top of it.
See Also
Sources
- Bright, Jake. "Lori Systems Raises Series A to Digitize African Freight." TechCrunch, 2019.
- Herbling, David. "Tech Startup Lori Systems Targets Africa's $180 Billion Freight Market." Bloomberg, 2020.
- Adegoke, Yinka. "Inside the Scramble to Fix Africa's Broken Logistics." Rest of World, 2021.
- International Finance Corporation. "Logistics in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities for the Private Sector." IFC Report, 2019.