We are also empowering local merchants and sellers by offering them access to the Jumia marketplace with low barriers to entry and access to millions of customers. While in many cases, currency devaluation or importation barriers make it cost prohibitive for consumers to purchase international brands by onboarding local vendors and African brands, customers have greater choices and are ensured more competitive pricing, thanks to a more flexible supply chain. To help vendors and brands reach more consumers, we are expanding our geographic footprint beyond major urban centers. While the opportunity in large metropolitan areas remained important, opportunities outside the cities are significant and capturing that market will be an important growth driver.
Today, roughly 51% of our orders are outside capital cities versus 48% a year ago. For example, in Nigeria, we are revamping our logistics capabilities to reach even more cities with shorter lead times and at a lower cost. Our network of Boots on the Ground agents known as JForce is a key asset to this expansion efforts. By serving as an intermediary between customers and Jumia, our JForce is a key enabler of e-commerce adoption. By the end of 2024, our goal is to have improved our efficiency and cost base across nearly 400 cities to effectively reach a broader customer base, while getting the most out of the markets in which we currently operate. As we look to the rest of 2024 and beyond, we remain excited about Jumia’s future. Our strategy is working and is driven by our deep local knowledge and over a decade of experience in Africa.
We are acquiring higher quality, more profitable customers while spending less and growing our business amidst the challenging macro environment. We are confident that we have the right strategy in place and are beginning to see real tangible return on investment. We are committed to continuing to execute and look forward to providing updates on our progress in the coming months. With that, I will turn it over to Antoine for a review of our financials. Antoine?
Antoine Maillet-Mezeray: Thank you, Francis, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I will now give an in-depth look at our first quarter results. Starting with the top line, total revenue was US$48.9 million, up 19% year over year or 57% on a constant currency basis. Marketplace revenue was US$25.9 million, up 11% year over year or 48% on a constant currency basis, driven by higher commissions and corporate sales, partially offset by the impact of foreign exchange. Revenue from first party sales was $22.4 million up 29% year over year or 69% on a constant currency basis, driven by sales of larger ticket items such as electronics and home and living, partially offset by the impact of foreign exchange. Gross profit was US$31.2 million, up 25% year over year or 67% on a constant currency basis.
Gross profit margin as a percentage of GMV was 17.2% compared to 14.4% in Q1 2023. These improvements were driven by corporate sales, improved market place margins and reduction in spending on customer incentives and promotions as part of our improved marketing spend efficiency. On the expense side, we continue to improve our cost base with fulfillment expenses of US$9.4 million down 21% year-over-year or up 5% on a constant currency basis. Fulfillment expense per order, excluding JumiaPay app orders, which do not incur logistics cost, increased 20% year-over-year, but increased 7% on a constant currency basis. Fulfillment expenses as a percentage of GMV improved from 6.8% in Q1 2023 to 5.2% this quarter, illustrating the importance of our logistics transformation to Jumia’s growth.
Not only we are continuing to expand our logistics footprint outside of major cities, but we have also been successful in reducing packaging cost and enhancing the customer experience all of which are helping to optimize our cost base. Sales and advertising expense was US$3.7 million, down 30% year-over-year and up 3% on a constant currency basis, driven by more efficient marketing spend. Advertising efficiency has improved as evidenced by advertising expense per order, decreasing from US$1.2 in Q1 2023 to $0.8 in Q1 2024. As a percentage of GMV, sales and advertising expense was 2.1%, an improvement of 102 basis points from Q1 2023, reflecting the success of our strategy to drive order growth through supply improvement versus increased marketing spend.
Turning to Technology. Our Tech and Content expense was $9.1 million this quarter, down 19% year-over-year or 17% on a constant currency basis. This was driven by savings achieved through better management of hosting infrastructure, operational tools and reductions in overhead. We have also relocated broader share of our developers and tech personnel to markets closer to our customers and sellers in Africa. As we move forward, we remain disciplined in our approach to cost in this area, while balancing the need to develop new features to improve the customer experience. G&A expense, excluding share based compensation was $15.3 million down 37% year-over-year and 23% on a constant currency basis. This decrease was driven mainly by a reduction in tax provision and by a decline in staff costs during the quarter.
Staff cost components of G&A expense, excluding share based compensation expense, decreased to 16% as a result of reductions in headcount. Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA loss declined to $4.3 million or $1.4 million on a constant currency basis. For greater clarity and visibility, let me quickly touch on how our finance costs impact our income statement. Specifically, finance costs on the income statement increased when we consolidate our earnings from areas experiencing currency devaluations as the conversion is done at the lower rates. Looking at loss before income tax from continuing operations, it totaled US$39.6 million in the quarter, a 36% increase year-over-year or 12% on a constant currency basis. The increase was largely driven by a $12 million increase in net foreign exchange losses, mostly without cash impact, as a result of currency devaluation in Nigeria and Egypt and an increase in finance costs related to our treasury activities.
The increase also reflects losses associated with our investment portfolio management activities. Adjusting from this outsized currency translation effect, our loss before income tax would have been $26.4 million as compared to $27.3 million in the first quarter of 2023, representing a 3% improvement year-over-year. Looking at the balance sheet and cash flow. CapEx in Q1 2024 was $0.8 million. Our liquidity position was US$101.5 million comprised of $28.6 million in cash and cash equivalents with cash impacted by currency devaluations in several of our top markets and $72.8 million in term deposits and other financial assets. This compares to term deposits and other financial assets of $118.6 million in Q1 2023 and $85.1 million in Q4 2023.
Net cash flow from operating activities was $4.5 million and working capital was $10.8 million in the first quarter of 2024. Similar to our earnings, our cash balance is at times impacted by one-time non-cash expenses, primarily foreign exchange related. From a cash flow perspective, in addition to the sizable non-cash expenses, we also incurred a $5.9 million loss on currency translation due to the aforementioned devaluations in some of our largest markets, which negatively impacted our liquidity position in Q1. As Francis noted, we are actively refining our cash repatriation and foreign exchange strategy having already repatriated cash from several of our main African markets to Germany. As a reminder, 79% of our liquidity position in Q1 was held in USD helping to limit our exposure to shifts in local currency valuations.
I will now turn it back to Francis for a detailed guidance.
