--- title: "Why Maka shut down" description: "MAKA was a social-commerce app for fashion and beauty, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Lagos with operations in Nigeria and Ghana. It was led by Diana Owusu-Kyereko, previously the first CEO of Jumia Ghana and chief commercial officer of Jumia Kenya, with Onome Uwhuba as co-founder and COO. On 13 December 2023 it announced a $2.65 million pre-seed co-led by 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital. No reporting on how or when the company ended could be found; the last coverage located dates from December 2023, and its makalive.com domain no longer resolves in DNS." canonical_url: "https://liners.com/graveyard/maka" markdown_url: "https://liners.com/graveyard/maka.md" type: "graveyard" language: "en" image: "/graveyard/maka/certificate.png" published_at: "2026-08-07T10:10:35.259Z" updated_at: "2026-08-07T10:10:35.259Z" --- # Why Maka shut down MAKA was a social-commerce app for fashion and beauty, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Lagos with operations in Nigeria and Ghana. It was led by Diana Owusu-Kyereko, previously the first CEO of Jumia Ghana and chief commercial officer of Jumia Kenya, with Onome Uwhuba as co-founder and COO. On 13 December 2023 it announced a $2.65 million pre-seed co-led by 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital. No reporting on how or when the company ended could be found; the last coverage located dates from December 2023, and its makalive.com domain no longer resolves in DNS. ## Breadcrumbs - [Graveyard](/graveyard) - [Maka](/graveyard/maka) ## Summary Here lies MAKA. Jumia Ghana's first chief executive built a live video shopping app for fashion and beauty and raised $2.65m in December 2023. Nothing was published after it. The livestream ended, and its lead investor quietly took the company off the portfolio page. MAKA was a social-commerce app for fashion and beauty, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Lagos with operations in Nigeria and Ghana. It was led by Diana Owusu-Kyereko, previously the first CEO of Jumia Ghana and chief commercial officer of Jumia Kenya, with Onome Uwhuba as co-founder and COO. On 13 December 2023 it announced a $2.65 million pre-seed co-led by 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital. No reporting on how or when the company ended could be found; the last coverage located dates from December 2023, and its makalive.com domain no longer resolves in DNS. ## Product history | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Fate | Dormant | | Primary cause | Unknown | | Stage at shutdown | Pre-seed | | Lifespan in days | 1064 | ## Autopsy report ## What the product attempted An app that tried to make African online fashion and beauty shopping look like social media rather than a catalogue. Creators ran livestreams and posted on-demand video, including live try-on hauls, and shoppers bought from the stream, the video or a conventional catalogue. Two problems were being addressed at once: giving African creators a way to monetise influence directly, and building enough trust in fit, quality and authenticity through video and user-generated reviews that people would buy clothes and cosmetics online. Product recommendations were pitched as tailored to a shopper's personal style. ## What worked MAKA raised a $2.65 million pre-seed announced on 13 December 2023, co-led by 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital, with Palm Drive Capital, angel investor Jonathan Shipman (founder of EVP and a Twitch founding member) and executives from the delivery platform Wolt participating; StartupList Africa additionally lists Golden Palm Investments as a backer. Coverage of the round reported more than 500,000 app downloads since launch (Disrupt Africa put the figure at over 550,000) and more than 2,000 user-generated video reviews created within two months of introducing the UGC model. The company was run by a founder with unusual sector credibility: Diana Owusu-Kyereko had been Jumia Ghana's first CEO. ## What happened Three new checkable facts, all on 2 August 2026. (1) makalive.com is gone at the DNS layer, not merely offline: its four delegated Amazon Route 53 nameservers answer REFUSED (Google Public DNS extended error 23, 'lame delegation'), which is what happens when the hosted zone is deleted while the delegation is left behind, and a fetch of any path under the host fails outright with 'Name or service not known'. (2) MAKA has been removed from, or was never added to, the portfolio page of 4DX Ventures, which co-led the round: the page lists 52 companies including several that have been acquired, and MAKA is not among them; Janngo Capital's investments page likewise names no portfolio companies at all and does not mention MAKA. (3) No Android listing survives: neither Google Play nor APKPure returns a MAKA fashion/beauty live-shopping app. Every publication search re-run in this pass returns only the December 2023 funding story and nothing after it. ## Sources - [Social commerce platform Maka raises $2.65M to simplify buying fashion and beauty products in Africa](https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/13/social-commerce-platform-maka-raises-2-65m-to-simplify-buying-fashion-and-beauty-products-in-africa/): TechCrunch - [MAKA raises a $2.65 million pre-seed to strengthen its presence in Nigeria and Ghana](https://techpoint.africa/news/maka-raises-preseed-nigeria-ghana/): Techpoint Africa - [Nigerian social commerce platform MAKA raises $2.65m pre-seed round](https://disruptafrica.com/2023/12/18/nigerian-social-commerce-platform-maka-raises-2-65m-pre-seed-round/): Disrupt Africa - [MAKA company profile](https://www.startuplist.africa/startups/maka): StartupList Africa - [4DX Ventures portfolio page](https://www.4dxventures.com/portfolio): 4DX Ventures - [Janngo Capital investments page](https://www.janngo.com/investments/): Janngo Capital - [MDTOK LIMITED (company 16441808) record](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/16441808): Companies House ## Related pages - [Maka alternatives](/maka/alternatives) - [Liners Graveyard](/graveyard) ## Access and citation - [Canonical HTML page](https://liners.com/graveyard/maka) - [Markdown route index](/sitemap.md) - [Agent access guide](/llms.txt)