Africa Marketplace Image Requirements 2026: Jumia, Takealot, Konga, Kilimall and Amazon.co.za Specs

Africa is the fastest-growing e-commerce region nobody writes image guides for. If you sell on Jumia, Takealot, Konga, Kilimall or the newer Amazon.co.za, you will not find a single tidy spec sheet that covers all of them. What you will find is contradictory advice, screenshots from 2019, and upload errors that tell you nothing useful.

This guide pulls together the current requirements for the major African marketplaces, flags where the published specs genuinely disagree with each other, and gives you one master file that passes every platform on the list.

The rule that makes Africa different: file weight

On Amazon US or Shopify, a 4MB hero image is wasteful but survivable. Across most of Africa it is a conversion problem, and the marketplaces know it. That is why the upload limits here are so much tighter than anywhere else in the world.

The reason is bandwidth economics. A basic 2GB mobile data plan cost the equivalent of roughly 3.9% of average monthly income in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a UN affordability target of 2%. Around 70% of the continent's population is within reach of a 4G network, which means a meaningful share of your buyers are still on 3G. Data is something shoppers ration.

Practically, this means two things. Jumia caps uploads at 1MB per image, not the 10MB you are used to. And a gallery of eight 2MB photos is not a rich shopping experience for a buyer in Lagos or Nairobi, it is a reason to close the tab. Optimise aggressively, and treat file size as a listing quality metric rather than an afterthought.

Takealot (South Africa)

Takealot is the largest marketplace in South Africa and it has the strictest composition rule on this list.

• Dimensions: minimum 600px on any side. Published maximums vary by source between 2048px and 5000px.
• File size: commonly cited as 2MB, though some guides list up to 10MB.
• Format: JPG or PNG, sRGB, minimum 72 DPI.
• Background: pure white, RGB 255/255/255, on the main image. Not transparent, and not "nearly white".
• Frame fill: the product must occupy 85% to 95% of the frame.
• Aspect ratio: square strongly preferred. 4:3, 3:2, 5:4, 5:3 and 16:9 are accepted; extreme ratios such as 8:1 are rejected.

The 85-95% frame fill is the number that catches people out. Most sellers coming from Amazon habitually leave a comfortable margin around the product, which lands them nearer 70% and looks weak in Takealot's grid. Crop tighter than instinct tells you.

Where the published limits conflict, the safe move is to satisfy the strictest version of every rule at once. A 1500 x 1500px square JPG under 2MB is inside every variant of the Takealot spec, so you never have to work out which document is current.

Jumia (Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco and more)

Jumia is the pan-African platform, and its documentation is genuinely split between two sets of numbers because the storefront and the uploader want different things.

The upload spec (Jumia VendorHub): minimum 500 x 500px, maximum 3000 x 3000px, with larger than 1000px per side recommended. JPEG preferred, PNG and TIFF accepted. Pure white background, RGB 255/255/255. The product must fill more than 80% of the image with nothing cropped off. One image minimum; six images plus a YouTube video ID recommended.

The display spec (Seller Center): 680 x 850px, a 4:5 portrait ratio, maximum 1MB. Images between 1000 x 1000 and 2000 x 2000px can be adjusted with Jumia's built-in crop tool.

These are not really in conflict once you understand what each is for. 680 x 850 is the portrait frame Jumia renders in, and the crop tool exists precisely because most sellers upload square. Upload a square image above 1000px, then use the crop tool to control what gets kept, rather than letting an automatic centre-crop decide. If you upload square and ignore the tool, expect the top and bottom of a tall product to be trimmed.

Jumia's prohibited list is long and enforced: no watermarks, text, logos, borders or colour blocks; no visible mannequins; no pricing or promotional badges; no review stars; no multiple views combined into one image; nothing that looks second-hand.

Amazon.co.za

Amazon South Africa follows global Amazon rules, so if you already sell on Amazon anywhere else, your existing files transfer directly.

• Minimum: 1000px on the longest side. Zoom activates from 1200px; Amazon recommends 1600px or larger.
• Frame fill: 80-90%.
• Background: pure white on the main image.
• Format: JPG preferred, RGB colour model only.
• Gallery: up to eight additional images.
• Prohibited: text, logos, watermarks, borders, props, packaging, visible mannequins or hangers, and multiple angles in one shot.

Konga, Kilimall, bidorbuy and Jiji

Konga (Nigeria) asks for white backgrounds and files between 100KB and 2MB. Its merchant documentation contains a well-known typo asking for "500 megapixel" images, which should read 500 x 500 pixels as a minimum. Aim well above it.

Kilimall (Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria) wants square 1:1 images, recommends 800 x 800px, accepts JPG, GIF and PNG, and caps files at roughly 1MB. Some older guidance cites 640 x 640px; 800 x 800 satisfies both.

bidorbuy (South Africa) accepts JPEG, GIF and PNG, either uploaded or referenced by URL, and does not publish strict pixel minimums. Jiji (classifieds across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia) rejects anything below 600 x 600px.

Specs at a glance

The master file that passes all of them

Shoot once, then export a single master and derive everything from it. The specification that clears every platform above:

1. Master: 2000 x 2000px square, JPG, sRGB, pure white RGB 255/255/255 background, product filling 88% of the frame. The 88% figure sits inside Takealot's 85-95% band and inside Amazon's 80-90% band simultaneously, so one crop serves both.
2. Amazon.co.za: the master, resized to 1600 x 1600px.
3. Takealot: 1500 x 1500px, compressed below 2MB.
4. Jumia: 1200 x 1200px under 1MB, then crop to 680 x 850 in Seller Center, or export the 4:5 crop yourself with the product recentred.
5. Konga and Kilimall: 1000 x 1000px and 800 x 800px respectively, both under 1MB.

The only awkward step is Jumia's 4:5 portrait, because it is the one ratio that cannot be produced by resizing a square. Everything else is a straight downscale plus compression, which is exactly the kind of repetitive work worth automating. A batch tool such as PixelPrep will take one master and output the full set of marketplace-sized, weight-capped files in a single pass, which matters more here than elsewhere because the 1MB ceilings mean you cannot simply upload the same file everywhere.

Why listings get rejected

In order of how often they occur:

• Off-white backgrounds. A background at 250/250/250 looks white to you and fails an automated check. Sample it and correct to exactly 255/255/255.
• Files over the cap. Jumia's 1MB limit is the most common upload failure on the continent. A 2000px JPG at quality 85 is usually 400-700KB, which is comfortably inside it.
• Too much white space. Failing Takealot's 85% floor is a composition problem, not a technical one, and no amount of re-exporting fixes it. Recrop.
• Badges and text on the main image. "Free delivery" or "50% off" overlays are banned on every platform here. Keep them for the second and third gallery slots where permitted.
• Wrong colour profile. Export sRGB. Adobe RGB files render dull and desaturated in browsers, which drives returns for anything colour-critical.

Your pre-upload checklist

1. Background sampled and confirmed at RGB 255/255/255
2. Product filling 85-90% of the frame, nothing cropped
3. Master exported square at 2000 x 2000px, sRGB, JPG
4. Per-marketplace sizes derived, each under its file cap
5. Jumia's 4:5 crop checked manually so nothing important is trimmed
6. No text, badges, watermarks, borders or props on the main image
7. Six or more gallery images prepared where the platform allows them
8. Every file under 1MB where possible, because your buyer is paying for the megabytes

African marketplaces are not harder than Western ones, they are just less documented and less forgiving on file weight. Get the master right once, keep everything lean, and the same catalogue will pass from Cape Town to Cairo.