Logistics in Africa remains one of the most recurring challenges businesses face on the continent. Even with the growth of digital commerce, goods still cannot move smoothly across cities and borders. Infrastructure gaps, regulatory complexity, and broken markets combine to cause delays, higher costs, and unreliable deliveries.
Despite these challenges, logistics is also an area where important innovations are emerging. Startups and technology platforms are filling gaps that traditional systems have failed to address. They are designing operational solutions around real constraints.
In the busy streets of Lagos, Nigeria, a small-scale business owner watches with a forlorn look on her face as her delivery van struggles to move through heavy traffic. A journey supposed to have lasted a couple of kilometers stretches into hours. This scene isn’t exclusive to Lagos alone. It is replicated across major African cities, constituting more than local frustration; it has now become a global logistics challenge that needs our attention.
For context, Europe experiences a much more seamless transition in the delivery of goods. A delivery within major urban centers like Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, and Düsseldorf takes about 90 minutes at most. Trying to cover this same distance in Lagos can take hours before the goods are delivered. These delays don’t just constitute inconveniences to the business owner; they’re economically disastrous.
Recent studies have revealed that sub-Saharan African businesses spend nearly twice the amount on logistics compared to their Western counterparts. Statistically, transportation costs account for over 21% of operating expenses.
“The results show a serious disconnect between the perception of the market and actual opportunities. These are some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Africa’s requirement for logistics services and supply chain expertise is huge and growing every day. At the same time, many of the companies that need logistics to enter the market don’t know how to get started in Africa or aren’t willing to take the risk,” says Geoffrey White, CEO of Agility Africa.
The logistics challenges aren’t shallow issues; they’re structural. The issues are deeply embedded in how physical infrastructure, regulation, and market organization bisect.
Road networks remain unbalanced. Many regions depend on poorly maintained roads that considerably slow movement and increase vehicular problems. Other methods of transportation, like railways and waterways, are either broken or poorly structured, which adds extra pressure on road transport. Overpopulation in urban cities also adds to delays, especially in fast-growing cities where planning lags behind population growth.
Regulatory fragmentation is another major source of constraint. Customs procedures, compliance requirements, and documentation standards differ across borders, increasing both transit time and cost. Even within countries, undertrained authorities and inconsistent enforcement add doubts to logistics operations.
Fuel and maintenance costs remain high, while access to financing for fleet expansion or modernization stays limited. Poor weather, terrain, and security concerns add additional variables. Taken together, these factors contribute significantly to making logistics in Africa a systemic business problem, a problem that cannot be solved by software.
Supply chain problems across the continent will eventually surface at certain predictable points.
Freight and cargo handling are still a problem, especially at ports and border crossings where manual processes still dominate. Delay ripple across the entire supply chains, affecting manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.
Warehousing and inventory management are not left out, they have their own abundance of problems as well. Many operators don’t have access to modern storage facilities and this often leads to spoilage, loss, and poor visibility for stocks. And also, it severely limits the capacity of businesses to plan and scale reliably.
Information asymmetry is another recurring challenge. Shippers, transporters, and customers operate with limited or archaic data, making it difficult to coordinate information accurately. The adoption of low technology amongst smaller operators reduces visibility the more.
Lastly, last-mile delivery is where the bulk of many logistics challenges is. Currently, Informal addressing systems, widespread population, and untrustworthy contact information make consistent delivery rather impossible, especially outside the urban areas. .
Logistics innovation in Africa has emerged as a solution to these structural gaps. And they’re not an attempt to remake global models wholesale.
Freight technology startups are focused on optimizing routes, matching loads and effectively utilizing provided capacity. Also, by measuring pieces of demand and supply, these startups are able to reduce empty miles and enhance asset efficiency.
Firms like Delivery platforms, like Trella in Egypt and Kobo360 in Nigeria, which recently closed a $20 million fundraising round led by Goldman Sachs, gained success by merging the already existing trucking capacity in place with demand by using digital platforms.
Data-driven tracking tools like Google Analytics, Data 360, Matomo, etc., provide real-time visibility into shipments, while enabling improved decision-making for businesses and operators alike.
Some supply chain startups like Zipline, iProcure, T.D.T Logistics Limited, specialize in rural or underserved routes, where traditional logistics players are finding it difficult to generate revenue. In these cases, logistics innovation becomes less about speed and focuses more on reliability and meeting already existing demands.
Despite its numerous and persistent difficulties, or exactly because of it, logistics is one of Africa’s largest untapped market opportunities. Eliminating friction in movement of goods will reduce costs across entire value chains. Manufacturers will have access to bigger markets, retailers will increase stock availability, and customers will benefit from reliable pricing and better delivery.
Improved logistics will unlock the cross-border trade option by making regional commerce possible for small-scale businesses. It’ll also give room for e-commerce to operate beyond major cities and support the sanctioning of informal markets.
The impact it has on operations is measurable: fewer delays, lower spoilage, higher asset utilization.
These outcomes drive adoption organically. Logistics innovation succeeds when it integrates into daily business operations, quietly enabling growth rather than announcing it.
In developed markets, inefficiencies often arise from labor shortages, congestion, or rising costs within otherwise reliable systems. And the solutions to these problems focus on automation and incremental optimization.
In Africa, foundational issues define the problem differently; road quality, regulatory fragmentation, data availability. Poor geographical mapping, unnamed streets make logistics uniquely hard.
This explains the difficulty some global delivery platforms face when they try to scale in and also why they fail and the homegrown solutions succeed instead.
Even the most promising logistics solutions aren’t spared from significant constraints.
The main limitations in African logistics arise from inadequate infrastructure, complex and inconsistent regulatory frameworks, geopolitical instability and security risks, and technological and human capital gaps. These factors result in high operational costs and significant delays, hindering intra-African and global trade competitiveness.
High capital requirements limit the pace of expansion, especially for asset-heavy models. While regulatory complexity can reduce the speed of approvals and increase compliance costs.
There is also the risk of a solution–problem mismatch. Tools that are created without the founder having a deep understanding of operational realities may fail to gain traction despite the sophistication of its technology.
A neutral assessment recognizes that logistics innovation is incremental, not transformational overnight.
Logistics in Africa illustrates a broader pattern in the continent’s business landscape. Sometimes, the most difficult problems often present the most durable opportunities.
Operational and infrastructure challenges are leading the charge for a new generation of entrepreneurs that are solely focused on system-level efficiency and not consumer novelty. Supply chain startups are rising as critical enablers of trade, manufacturing, and e-commerce.
These businesses often appear bland: shorter headlines, longer timelines, deeper complexity. Despite these, their impact is foundational. And as logistical efficiency begins to improve, entire markets become more accessible.
Logistics innovation signals that Africa’s economic future will be shaped not by visibility, but by movement of goods, services, and value.
In Africa, logistics ranks among the most difficult and strategic business problems on the continent. Infrastructure gaps, regulatory complexity, and market fragmentation make these challenges resistant to simple solutions. Yet startups and technology platforms steadily address these gaps through operational design rather than marketing narratives.
By solving last-mile delivery problems and broader supply chain inefficiencies, these companies aim to unlock economic value far beyond their present customers. The efficiency of goods movement will heavily shape the future of African business innovation. Solving these challenges drives improvements in logistics and helps markets grow.