Built by US Army veterans with a combined 20 years in operational logistics.
AFRIKARS exists to solve one problem: trust. Car buyers should be able to make smart, informed decisions, and buying a car should not be as difficult as it is today.
A trustworthy bridge between continents.
Africans have always bought cars from overseas. Through cousins, agents, brokers, group chats. For years, buyers have paid without knowing what they were really paying for, or what they were really getting. You've heard the stories: a car from a dealer you thought you could trust, and the first engine failure less than a month in.
Owning a car in Africa is already hard. Buying one shouldn't make it harder. We're bringing transparency, escrow protection, listings checked by our team and real-time tracking to a process that's been opaque for decades. You no longer have to buy blind. A platform you can trust, with information you can trust.
Our north star: a buyer in Lagos, Accra or Nairobi should be able to purchase a Toyota Highlander in Houston with the same confidence they'd buy a phone on Jumia.
What we stand for
- Escrow on every transactionHeld in escrow by a licensed partner, released as each step is verified.
- Checked listingsDealer video and history report, checked by our team. Real photos.
- Transparent pricingNo surprise duty, port or clearing fees.
- End-to-end logisticsFrom driveway to your door, tracked.
The problem we're solving
It all comes back to trust. Buyers can't trust what they can't see: the money, the fees, or the car's journey. We fix all three.
Trust gap
Buyers wire thousands of dollars to people they've never met, with no recourse if something goes wrong.
A licensed partner holds the money. It is released as each step is verified.
Hidden costs
Sticker price is just the beginning. Duty, customs charges, clearing, port, and shipping can double the cost.
Our calculator itemizes every fee in USD and Naira before you commit.
Logistics chaos
Different agents for each leg, no tracking, weeks of uncertainty about where your car actually is.
One platform. End-to-end coordination. Real-time status tracking.
Built on one principle: trust.
Decades of combined expertise, covering every mile of the journey and every dollar in the deal.
Military Logistics Officer
A career spent moving people, vehicles and cargo across continents under real constraints, where late is not an option. That discipline runs our delivery spine: planned routes, tracked milestones, no guesswork.
Military Security Officer
Trained to see risk before it becomes loss. Vetting and verification are built into every step, from the dealers we list to the agents who clear your car.
Banking and Finance
Deep experience in how money should move. Escrow with licensed partners, itemized costs, and funds that release only as each step is verified. Your money follows rules, not promises.
Meta Engineers
Engineers who built consumer products at Meta scale. That bar for reliability and clarity powers the platform: real-time tracking, transparent pricing, and no black boxes.
Nigerian Customs Agent
Licensed clearing expertise at the port where it matters most. Duty, levies and paperwork handled right the first time, so your car leaves the port on schedule with no surprise fees.
US Army veteran with a decade in operational logistics. Shipped and sold cars across continents long before AFRIKARS. Saw family and friends burned by failed cross-border transactions, and decided to fix it.
From the desk of the CEO
I'm a US Army veteran and a logistics expert. I spent the last decade running complex logistics operations, moving people, heavy military equipment, ammunition and cargo across continents under some of the most difficult circumstances there are. Alongside that, I shipped vehicles across borders from the US and Dubai, for family, for friends, and sometimes for profit.
In that time I learned the car market from the inside, and how broken the industry is. Stories of people burned by failed transactions, people paying the highest prices for the lowest quality, and people paying for cars that never showed up at all. Different countries, different brokers, same story.
Buying a car in Houston from Lagos shouldn't be a leap of faith. It shouldn't depend on who you know. Dealers shouldn't charge exotic prices simply because they have access you don't. That access should be democratized. So I stepped away from active duty to commit my knowledge and expertise to getting the best quality cars to every buyer across the continent.
AFRIKARS is that one-stop shop, and what we offer is trust. We buy the car on your behalf, from the dealer or the auction. In-house clearing agents. Secured payments on every transaction. Transparent landed-cost pricing in USD and Naira before you commit a single dollar. The car you authorize is the car that arrives, photographed at pickup and at the port, with every stage on the record. And when it comes to shipping and clearing, you don't have to worry. We handle the rest.
Emmanuel Omotoso, Founder & CEO of AFRIKARS
Join us in fixing this.
Browse cars, try the calculator, or sign up to sell.