Ibrahim Shuwehdi: Mataa and Libya’s E-Commerce Infrastructure

Ibrahim Shuwehdi is a Libyan entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Mataa, a Tripoli-based e-commerce company established in 2022. The business operates a mobile-first marketplace connecting consumers with merchants while developing the logistics infrastructure required to move products from sellers to buyers across the Libyan market. StartupList Africa identifies Shuwehdi as Mataa’s founder and CEO, while Inc. Arabia describes the company as a marketplace designed to give Libyan merchants access to the country’s large online consumer base.

That distinction matters because Libya’s e-commerce challenge is not simply a shortage of websites or shopping apps. A functioning online retail market requires reliable inventory, warehouses, order processing, payments, merchant integration, fulfillment and first- and last-mile delivery. If those systems do not work together, the digital storefront has limited value.

Mataa has increasingly built those functions itself. In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Shuwehdi said the company handles its own logistics operations rather than relying entirely on third parties, including first-mile collection, last-mile delivery, stock management, product data, cash collection and settlement with sellers. The result is a business whose role increasingly resembles e-commerce infrastructure rather than a conventional online retailer.

Who Is Ibrahim Shuwehdi?

Ibrahim Shuwehdi is a Libyan technology entrepreneur based in Tripoli and the founder and CEO of Mataa. His LinkedIn profile identifies his work with the company and his connection to the University of Tripoli, while independent startup databases and reporting consistently identify him as the entrepreneur behind Mataa.

Shuwehdi founded Mataa in 2022 at a time when Libya’s formal startup and venture-capital ecosystem remained relatively small. Online buying was already taking place, particularly through Facebook pages and other social channels, but much of that activity remained fragmented and dependent on informal arrangements between sellers, couriers and customers.

Mataa’s opportunity was therefore not simply to persuade Libyans to shop online. Consumers were already doing that. The harder problem was to create a more organized system around an existing behavior by bringing products, merchants, logistics and customer service into one platform.

That approach has shaped the company’s development from the beginning.

Why Libya’s E-Commerce Problem Is Really an Infrastructure Problem

E-commerce is often presented as a technology business, but technology is only one part of the model.

A customer can place an order in seconds. Completing that transaction requires considerably more work.

The retailer needs to know whether the product is actually available. The item must be located, packed and prepared for dispatch. A delivery system has to move it from the warehouse or merchant to the buyer. Payment has to be collected, customer questions handled and returns managed when something goes wrong.

In mature e-commerce markets, specialized companies already provide many of these functions. Warehousing, fulfillment, digital payments and courier networks can be purchased as services.

Libyan companies have fewer such options.

Shuwehdi told Inc. Arabia that Mataa responded by bringing much of the operating chain in-house. The company manages first-mile and last-mile logistics itself and also supports merchants with inventory, product information, collection and settlement.

This makes Mataa’s business substantially more operationally intensive than simply building an app.

It also explains why logistics has become central to Shuwehdi’s strategy.

Building the Logistics Behind Online Shopping

The last mile is one of the most difficult parts of e-commerce in almost every market because it is where digital transactions meet physical geography.

In Libya, the challenge is compounded by fragmented logistics networks and the practical difficulties of moving products across a large country. A marketplace may aggregate thousands of products online, but it still needs a reliable way to collect, organize and deliver those products in the physical world.

Mataa has built dedicated first-mile and last-mile operations around that problem. Shuwehdi told Inc. Arabia that the company handles logistics internally rather than depending on outside providers, an approach intended to give Mataa greater control over delivery speed and reliability.

A later profile of the company by THIRD reported that Mataa had reduced average delivery times to less than a day and was handling more than 1,000 orders per day at the time of publication. The same profile reported that the platform had reached roughly 300,000 downloads and more than 50,000 products by 2024. These figures come from a company-focused profile and should be understood in that context, but they indicate the scale Mataa was attempting to support operationally.

The significance lies less in any single order figure than in the infrastructure required to produce it. At sufficient scale, e-commerce becomes a logistics operation supported by software rather than simply a software company that happens to deliver products.

Cash on Delivery Is Part of the Model

Payments present another challenge.

E-commerce businesses in more mature digital markets can often assume that customers will pay electronically at checkout. Libya remains more dependent on cash, which changes how an online marketplace has to operate.

Rather than waiting for consumer behavior to shift completely toward digital payments, Mataa adapted its operating model around the market that already existed.

The THIRD profile reported that the overwhelming majority of Mataa transactions were still completed through cash on delivery at the time of its reporting. This means the company has to manage not only product delivery but also the movement of cash between consumers, drivers, Mataa and merchants.

That creates operational complexity, but it also removes one of the barriers that could otherwise prevent consumers from buying online.

The approach is similar to what successful digital companies often do in markets with infrastructure gaps: instead of treating the missing infrastructure as somebody else’s problem, they build around it.

For Mataa, that has meant turning payment collection into part of the logistics system.

Moving Libya’s Social-Media Sellers Into a Marketplace

Libya already had a form of digital commerce before companies such as Mataa began building formal marketplaces.

A significant amount of buying and selling takes place through Facebook pages and other social-media channels, where merchants can reach consumers without operating conventional e-commerce websites.

That model gives small sellers access to customers, but it can also be fragmented. Merchants have to manage advertising, messages, product availability, deliveries and payments through separate processes.

Mataa has attempted to bring some of those sellers into a more organized marketplace.

According to Inc. Arabia, the platform allows Facebook-based sellers to integrate their products with Mataa, giving them another route to consumers while reducing their dependence on paid social-media advertising.

This is one of the more important parts of the company’s model because it positions Mataa as infrastructure for merchants rather than simply a competitor to them.

A marketplace becomes more valuable as more sellers participate, while sellers benefit from access to a shared system for logistics, product discovery and customer acquisition.

If that model develops further, the platform can potentially help move part of Libya’s informal social-commerce activity into a more structured digital retail environment.

Mataa’s First Seed Funding Round

One of the most significant milestones in Mataa’s development came in July 2025, when the company announced its first seed investment round from a group of Libyan angel investors.

The amount was initially left undisclosed in most reporting. Daba Finance, Inc. Arabia and other startup publications reported that the capital would be used to strengthen first- and last-mile logistics, expand warehouse capacity, add suppliers and product categories, invest in technology and recruit experienced regional e-commerce talent.

Shuwehdi described one of the central objectives as building a larger fulfillment operation and moving Mataa further toward a true marketplace model.

That use of capital is revealing.

The company was not primarily raising money to finance advertising or simply increase app downloads. Much of the investment was directed toward warehouses, fulfillment and logistics, the physical systems needed to support online transactions.

For Libya’s startup ecosystem, the funding was also notable because much of the country’s early-stage technology sector has historically had limited access to conventional venture investment.

A later Technext report said the round exceeded $1 million, although Mataa did not publicly disclose the precise figure when the investment was initially announced. The safer conclusion is that the round represented a meaningful local investment in a sector where formal venture funding remains relatively uncommon.

What Mataa’s Funding Says About Libya’s Startup Market

The source of the investment is almost as important as the amount.

The round was backed by Libyan angel investors rather than a major foreign venture fund.

That reflects both a limitation and an opportunity.

Shuwehdi has spoken publicly about the difficulty Libyan startups face in attracting international venture capital. In an interview with Technext, he argued that outdated regulation and the structure of Libya’s business environment remain important barriers for foreign investors, even when the underlying consumer market is attractive.

Local capital can partially fill that gap.

Successful investments by Libyan businesspeople into domestic technology companies could create a track record that encourages more investors to consider startups alongside traditional sectors such as real estate, trade and construction.

Mataa alone cannot create a venture-capital ecosystem, but companies that demonstrate commercial traction make the argument for investing in Libyan technology easier to sustain.

This is why the company’s funding round matters beyond Mataa itself.

Libya Has Consumers Online, but Commerce Is Still Catching Up

One of the more interesting features of Libya’s digital economy is the gap between connectivity and the development of formal online services.

Libya has relatively high internet and mobile usage, yet its startup ecosystem remains small compared with those of Egypt, the Gulf or several sub-Saharan African markets.

Technext reported internet penetration of roughly 88.5% in early 2025, while Mataa’s investment announcements repeatedly referred to a potential domestic audience of more than six million internet users.

That creates a market where consumers are already online even though much of the commercial infrastructure serving them remains underdeveloped.

This distinction matters because digital adoption does not automatically create a digital economy.

Consumers can spend hours online without having access to reliable marketplaces, payment systems, delivery networks or merchant infrastructure.

Those systems still have to be built.

Mataa’s strategy is based on the idea that the opportunity lies in connecting Libya’s existing digital consumer base with a more organized retail and logistics network.

Technology Alone Is Not Enough

Shuwehdi’s experience also illustrates a broader lesson about startups in frontier markets.

The companies that succeed are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated software. They are often the ones that understand which parts of the surrounding infrastructure they cannot assume will already exist.

Mataa has had to work on its own logistics, inventory systems, warehouse operations, merchant onboarding and payment collection. Shuwehdi has also discussed rebuilding parts of the company’s technology stack as the business scaled, including its ERP, vendor-management systems and customer application. His public posts show a company treating operational software and physical logistics as parts of the same system. (Ibrahim Shuwehdi on LinkedIn)

That is an important distinction for Libya’s digital economy.

Building another consumer-facing app is relatively easy compared with building an operating system that consistently fulfills thousands of transactions.

The long-term value of a company such as Mataa will depend on whether it can make those underlying systems increasingly reliable and efficient.

Can Mataa Become a Regional Company?

Shuwehdi’s ambitions extend beyond Libya.

He has repeatedly described North Africa as the longer-term market for Mataa, while emphasizing that the immediate priority is to establish a strong domestic position first. In his Inc. Arabia interview, Shuwehdi argued that Libya’s location between North African markets and its links with both Arab and African economies could eventually support regional expansion.

He has also engaged with regional e-commerce executives. In 2024, Shuwehdi publicly discussed meeting Jumia Tunisia CEO Yosra Bejaoui to exchange views on e-commerce and logistics challenges in North Africa. (Ibrahim Shuwehdi on LinkedIn)

Regional expansion, however, is substantially more difficult than growing within Libya.

Consumer behavior differs across countries, logistics networks change, regulations vary and local competitors already understand their markets. A model built around Libya cannot simply be exported unchanged.

The more immediate significance of Mataa is therefore domestic.

If the company can build a functioning marketplace and logistics system in Libya, regional expansion becomes a possibility rather than the basis on which the business should currently be judged.

What Ibrahim Shuwehdi’s Story Means for Libya’s Digital Economy

Ibrahim Shuwehdi’s business story is useful because it shows that the hardest part of digital commerce is often not digital at all.

The app is visible to the customer, but much of the value is created behind it.

Warehouses have to operate correctly. Merchants need systems for managing inventory. Drivers have to collect and deliver orders. Cash has to move through the network. Products need accurate data. Customer complaints have to be resolved and sellers need to receive their money.

Mataa has been building those functions because Libya’s e-commerce ecosystem does not yet provide all of them as mature standalone services.

That makes the company relevant beyond the products sold through its app.

If Mataa improves logistics, fulfillment and merchant infrastructure, those capabilities contribute to a broader transition from informal online selling toward more organized digital commerce.

The company also provides another example of Libyan entrepreneurs building around local constraints rather than waiting for those constraints to disappear.

Shuwehdi did not wait for Libya to have a mature venture-capital ecosystem before starting the company, nor did Mataa wait for cash-on-delivery or fragmented logistics to disappear before attempting to scale. The business incorporated those conditions into its model and then began investing in the systems required to improve them.

That is where Ibrahim Shuwehdi fits into the wider story of Libyan entrepreneurs building the private economy beyond oil.

Libya’s digital economy will not be built simply by increasing internet penetration or smartphone ownership. It will be built when companies develop the payments, logistics, warehouses, software and merchant infrastructure that allow those connected consumers to conduct more of their economic activity online.

Mataa is attempting to build that layer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ibrahim Shuwehdi?

Ibrahim Shuwehdi is a Libyan entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Mataa, a Tripoli-based e-commerce and marketplace company founded in 2022. StartupList Africa and other startup publications identify him as the company’s founder and chief executive.

What is Ibrahim Shuwehdi known for?

Shuwehdi is best known for founding Mataa, an e-commerce platform combining online retail with marketplace technology, warehousing and first- and last-mile logistics in Libya.

What is Mataa?

Mataa is a Libyan e-commerce marketplace founded in 2022. It operates a mobile shopping platform while also providing logistics and merchant-support infrastructure, including delivery, inventory handling and marketplace services. (Mataa profile)

Has Mataa raised investment?

Yes. Mataa announced its first seed investment round in July 2025, backed by a group of Libyan angel investors. The company said the funding would support logistics, warehouse expansion, technology, supplier growth and further development of its marketplace model. (Daba Finance)

Does Mataa operate its own delivery network?

Mataa has said that it manages its own first-mile and last-mile logistics rather than relying entirely on third-party providers. The company also handles functions including stock management, product data, cash collection and merchant settlement. (Inc. Arabia)

Is Mataa planning to expand outside Libya?

Shuwehdi has publicly described regional expansion as a longer-term objective, particularly within North Africa, but has said the immediate priority is strengthening Mataa’s position and infrastructure in the Libyan market.

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