Uber shut down its Nigerian ride-hailing operation on September 2 after 12 years in the country. Its proposed acquisition of Delivery Hero includes Glovo’s businesses in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco and Tunisia. Uber is offering €41.50 in cash for each Delivery Hero share, valuing the company at $14.8 billion. Delivery Hero’s boards now […] The post From Ride-Hailing To Delivery, How Uber Could Re-Enter Nigeria Through Glovo appeared first on THEWILL NEWS MEDIA .
September 06, (THEWILL) — September 2 was supposed to mark the end of Uber’s Nigerian story.
After 12 years of picking up passengers, navigating Lagos traffic and absorbing the realities of one of Africa’s toughest operating environments, Uber stopped taking rides in Nigeria.
The company also exited Uganda, describing both decisions as the result of a review of its business and investment priorities across Africa. It did not offer a detailed explanation for the Nigerian withdrawal.
On the same day Uber’s Nigerian ride-hailing business disappeared, Delivery Hero’s board and supervisory board recommended that shareholders accept Uber’s offer to buy the German delivery company.
Delivery Hero owns Glovo, whose Nigerian operation is among the businesses included in Uber’s side of the transaction.
Uber is therefore leaving one Nigerian market while positioning itself to enter another.
Nothing suggests the company is changing its mind about ride-hailing. A passenger trip and a food delivery are different businesses, with different costs, customer behaviour and economics.
What makes the timing interesting is the possibility that Uber has concluded it would rather own the network through which Nigerians order things than keep fighting to transport the people ordering them.
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, at a company event in 2026. Source: Getty Images
Uber’s offer for Delivery Hero is straightforward on paper: €41.50 in cash for each share, representing an equity value of $14.8 billion.
Delivery Hero shareholders have until November 5 to accept the offer, and the company’s two boards now recommend that they do so. Uber expects the transaction to close in the second half of 2027, assuming the remaining conditions and regulatory approvals are met.
Nigeria sits inside the part of Delivery Hero that Uber wants.
So do Glovo’s operations in Kenya, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco and Tunisia. Across the wider transaction, Uber would acquire businesses in 50 markets.
Delivery Hero’s operations in another 14 markets are being sold separately to SSW Partners for about $1.6 billion, particularly in places where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero already overlap.
Glovo is valuable to Uber for a fairly unglamorous reason; someone else has already done the hard part.
A delivery platform cannot simply launch an app and wait for a market to appear. It needs restaurants and retailers willing to use it, couriers willing to deliver for it, customers willing to order through it and enough activity on all sides to keep the network moving.
It needs merchant relationships, dispatch systems, payments, customer support and local knowledge. None of those things becomes easier simply because a company has a recognisable global brand.
Glovo has already spent years putting those pieces together in Nigeria.
Uber would be buying an operating network instead of building one.
That is a much more interesting proposition than simply adding another logo to Uber’s portfolio.
Delivery Hero has spent the past several years pushing Glovo beyond restaurant meals into grocery, retail and other forms of local commerce.
Its own description of the business is a multicategory platform connecting consumers with restaurants, supermarkets, grocers and high-street retailers.
Delivery Hero’s wider strategy has also been moving toward what it calls an “Everyday App,” with quick commerce becoming an increasingly important part of the business. Its second-quarter results showed quick-commerce GMV growing 19% year on year, ahead of overall group growth.
For Uber, that makes Glovo more than a food-delivery business.
It is a ready-made position in the everyday movement of goods around Nigerian cities.
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Oscar Pierre, co-founder and former chief executive of Glovo. Source: Handelsblatt/Glovo archival coverage.
The most revealing part of Uber’s transaction may be the businesses it is leaving behind.
Delivery Hero is selling 14 markets to SSW Partners, including Glovo operations in Moldova, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain. Those markets are among the places where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero already have significant overlap.
Nigeria does not appear in that carve-out, neither do Kenya, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco or Tunisia.
Uber’s own transaction documents say the SSW sale covers markets “particularly where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero already overlap.”
That is the documented explanation for the carve-out. Anything more specific about why an individual African market remains with Uber would be inference, not something either company has publicly stated.
Still, the commercial logic is difficult to miss.
Uber is not buying Glovo Nigeria to combine two enormous existing Uber and Glovo delivery businesses in Lagos. It is acquiring Glovo’s established position in a market where it can obtain customers, merchants and delivery infrastructure through ownership rather than years of expansion.
Nigeria also gives the deal an unusual twist because Uber has just surrendered its own local mobility network.
The company spent 12 years building relationships with drivers and passengers before deciding to leave. Glovo gives it a different kind of network of merchants, couriers and customers who are already paying to move things around the same cities.
None of this means Uber owns Glovo Nigeria as of today.
Delivery Hero and Uber remain separate companies until the transaction closes. Shareholders still have to accept the offer, and regulatory approvals remain part of the process.
Delivery Hero’s latest financial update says the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2027, subject to customary conditions including regulatory approvals.
Nigeria’s competition regulator also has a framework for reviewing qualifying mergers and acquisitions. Under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, the FCCPC can review, approve, approve with conditions or prohibit qualifying mergers, and its current guidance requires transactions meeting the applicable thresholds to be notified before implementation.
No public FCCPC approval of Uber’s proposed acquisition of Glovo’s Nigerian business has been announced.
For now, little changes for a Nigerian Glovo user. Glovo remains Glovo. Its merchants and couriers continue operating under Delivery Hero, and Uber has no ownership rights over the Nigerian business until the wider transaction is completed.
If the deal is completed, Uber could bring more capital and technology into a delivery business that already has local scale. It could use Glovo to deepen its position in food, groceries and retail. It could also change the competitive balance of Nigerian delivery if the company decides to put the full weight of its global operation behind the platform.
Customers may get a better service from a better-funded Glovo. Competitors may get a much harder company to beat.
Neither outcome is automatic.
What is clear is that Uber’s Nigerian exit was not necessarily the end of its interest in Nigeria’s digital economy. It may simply mark the end of one business model.
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