In my last article, I asked a question that had been bothering me for some time:

Why is it still easier for Africa to trade with China than with itself?

The question came from my own experience trying to invest across African borders, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the problem extends far beyond payments.

I see another version of it every day in procurement.

If I need to find a supplier in China, I know where to start.

Within minutes, I can search for manufacturers producing a particular product. I can see what they manufacture, compare suppliers, request quotations and start a conversation.

Now try doing the same thing across Africa.

Suppose I am sitting in Johannesburg looking for a manufacturer in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria or Rwanda.

Where do I start?

Google?

LinkedIn?

A chamber of commerce?

A government database?

An industry association?

Someone I happen to know who knows someone?

That is an extraordinary way to conduct trade on a continent trying to create an integrated market.

And the numbers suggest we still have a long way to go.

Intra-African trade reached approximately US$220.3 billion in 2024, growing 12.4% from the previous year. That sounds encouraging — and it is.

But it represented only 14.4% of Africa’s total trade.

In other words, despite sharing a continent and despite the enormous push toward regional integration, the overwhelming majority of Africa’s trade is still conducted with the rest of the world.

The suppliers are there

One of the things I have become increasingly conscious of through my work in procurement is that Africa may not have as much of a supplier shortage as we think.

We have a supplier visibility problem.

Across the continent, businesses manufacture products, provide services, process agricultural goods, fabricate components and develop technologies.

But many of these businesses are remarkably difficult to find outside their immediate markets.

At the same time, something interesting is happening inside large organisations.

Companies have spent years building supplier databases.

Procurement teams ask suppliers to register on portals, submit company documents, provide banking information, identify their products and services, complete compliance questionnaires and regularly update their information.

Think about how much supplier information already exists inside corporate systems across Africa.

And yet, when someone in another organisation wants to find a supplier, much of that intelligence effectively disappears.

It is sitting somewhere.

It just isn’t available to the market.

We keep collecting the same information

Consider the experience from the supplier’s side.

A small manufacturer may register with one mining company.

Then another.

Then a retailer.

Then a bank.

Then a government department.

Then a large industrial company.

Each time, the supplier is asked for variations of the same information.

Who are you?

What do you sell?

Where are you located?

What certifications do you have?

What markets do you serve?

What is your capacity?

The supplier provides the information again and again.

We have therefore created thousands of individual pools of supplier information without necessarily creating meaningful supplier-market intelligence.

That distinction matters.

A supplier portal helps an organisation manage its suppliers.

A functioning commercial ecosystem helps a market discover them.

Those are not the same thing.

China’s advantage is not only price

When we discuss China’s dominance in African supply chains, the conversation often focuses on price.

And price matters.

Manufacturing scale matters.

Infrastructure matters.

But there is another advantage that receives far less attention:

Chinese suppliers are easy to find.

Global buyers have access to enormous commercial ecosystems that make manufacturers visible.

You can search.

You can compare.

You can communicate.

You can evaluate.

And increasingly, those ecosystems connect buyers to payment, logistics and fulfilment services.

The distance between “I need this product” and “I found someone who can supply it” has become remarkably short.

Across Africa, that distance can still be enormous.

Every additional step creates friction.

And the problem is bigger than supplier discovery

This is where things become interesting.

Finding a supplier is only the beginning.

As a buyer, I need to know more.

Can this supplier actually manufacture what it says it can manufacture?

Does it have the required certifications?

What is its production capacity?

Has it supplied companies similar to mine?

Can it export?

Can I verify the business?

How will I pay it?

How will the goods move across the border?

What happens if something goes wrong?

These questions connect supplier discovery directly to trust, verification, payments and logistics.

And increasingly, the evidence suggests that this kind of operational fragmentation matters enormously.

Recent World Bank research estimates that around 60% of Africa’s trade costs arise behind countries’ own borders, driven by issues including customs inefficiencies, weak logistics, regulatory differences, transport restrictions, fragmented standards, services barriers and inadequate infrastructure.

That changes how we should think about African trade.

The challenge is not simply getting goods across a border.

It is making all the systems surrounding a commercial transaction work together.

AfCFTA can open the border. Someone still has to find the supplier.

The African Continental Free Trade Area represents an extraordinary opportunity.

It provides the framework for connecting African economies into a much larger continental market.

But a trade agreement alone cannot create trade.

Businesses have to use it.

And before a business can import something from another African country, it first has to know that the supplier exists.

Imagine I run a business in Johannesburg and want to source something currently imported from outside Africa.

Can I easily determine whether someone manufactures it in Ghana?

Or Kenya?

Or Egypt?

Can I compare potential suppliers?

Can I establish whether they are credible?

Can I understand how I would pay them?

Can I determine how the product would reach South Africa?

If answering those questions requires weeks of emails, referrals, internet searches and phone calls, then removing a tariff solves only part of the problem.

Because trade does not begin at the border.

Trade begins when a buyer discovers a seller.

We may be building the wrong thing

Perhaps the answer is not another supplier portal.

We already have plenty of those.

Perhaps we need to think differently about the information we already possess.

Supplier information sits inside procurement systems, corporate databases, chambers of commerce, industry associations, development agencies, trade bodies and countless spreadsheets across the continent.

The problem is that these systems largely exist as separate islands.

And this is part of a much broader challenge.

The World Bank recently argued that Africa’s next phase of economic integration will depend not simply on trade agreements, but on whether the systems businesses use every day — customs, transport, standards, payments, finance, digital platforms and data — can actually work together across borders.

That is a very different challenge from simply creating another database.

It is a question of commercial infrastructure.

How do we make African businesses discoverable?

How do we establish trust between buyers and suppliers who have never met?

How do we connect verification, payments and logistics?

And how do we do that without asking African businesses to register their information for the hundredth time?

Perhaps we need to rethink the question

For years, African procurement conversations have included some version of:

How do we get companies to buy more locally or source more from African businesses?

Perhaps there is a question that needs to come before it.

How easy have we made it for buyers to find African businesses in the first place?

Intra-African trade is growing. That is encouraging.

But at 14.4% of the continent’s total trade, there is clearly enormous room to do more.

AfCFTA provides an important framework.

The next challenge is making trade practical.

That means connecting markets.

Connecting information.

Connecting payments.

Connecting logistics.

And, most fundamentally, connecting buyers with sellers.

Because before we ask African businesses to trade more with one another, we need to make sure they can find one another.

You cannot buy African if you cannot find African.