by Wayne Meisel, Market Development & Customer Officer, SAP Southern & Emerging Africa
Africa has spent the post-pandemic years pursuing strategic investments into more resilient supply chains. This year, amid growing geopolitical disruption and escalating conflict, those investments will be tested to their limits.
Since 2020, the continent has seen meaningful investment in logistics infrastructure. The African Development Bank committed a record $11.1 billion in 2024–2025, while Africa50 deepened its role in financing trade-enabling infrastructure. Ports have been one of the clearest focal points. Nigeria’s Lekki Deep Sea Port is emerging as a serious regional node. South Africa’s Cape Town and Ngqura ports have posted notable improvements in performance after years of decline, while Transnet has clawed back some operational ground through better turnaround times and improved crane productivity.
Throughout Africa, governments have invested in ports, rail and trade corridors, and the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has started to turn the long-discussed idea of regional trade integration into something more tangible. In pockets across the continent, the results are faster cargo movement, stronger port performance, growing intra-African trade, and a more serious push toward localisation in sectors ranging from manufacturing to health.
AfCFTA notably helped push intra-African trade to $220.3 billion in 2024, up 12.4% year on year, following a sharp jump in the number of countries actively trading under the agreement. However, it remains a work in progress instead of a finished shield, with tariff schedules, digital trade protocols, customs harmonisation and non-tariff barriers still being worked through.
Test of resilience
The question now is whether the progress made within the continent’s supply chains has delivered the resilience to withstand repeated shocks. The Red Sea crisis, now stretching into its third year, has already forced a major restructuring of Asia-Europe-Africa shipping. The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz has layered a second and more acute shock onto already strained global trade flows.
For African economies, the effect is being felt all at once through higher freight costs, longer lead times, elevated fuel prices, fertilizer disruption, and tighter access to trade finance.
Agriculture is especially exposed. A significant share of Africa’s fertilizer imports comes from Gulf producers, with East and Southern Africa particularly reliant on those flows. Disruption in Hormuz raises shipping costs, and threatens planting cycles, food production, and ultimately food security. Constricted fertilizer supply drives up costs, with the shock moving quickly from ports and tankers into farms, food prices, and household budgets.
Africa’s trade finance gap creates additional challenges. When lead times become unpredictable, businesses carry more buffer stock. Cost increases for fuel, freight and insurance drives demand for greater working capital. When banks remain cautious and access to formal trade finance is limited, especially for SMEs, resilience becomes something only the largest firms can afford.
This is why the next phase of supply chain resilience in Africa cannot be built only with cranes, roads, and policy frameworks, but with better visibility, greater efficiency, and improved decision-making.
A connected supply chain
Greater digitalisation is one of the most encouraging developments since the pandemic. Digital customs systems, single windows, electronic cargo tracking, and trade portals are reducing friction at the border.
In markets where customs and border processes have been digitised, clearance times have improved by 30% to 50%. Digital trade facilitation has already shown what practical resilience looks like: less paperwork, better visibility, fewer delays, and more predictable movement of goods.
Digital platforms, AI-enabled forecasting, and scenario modelling have become more than technology talking points. In a volatile operating environment, end-to-end visibility is the difference between reacting late and acting early. Companies need a clearer view across suppliers, logistics partners, inventory, transport routes, and cost exposure. They need to test disruption scenarios before they happen, and model the impact of rerouting, delays, fuel spikes, or supplier failure in real time.
This is where embedded AI and better workflow orchestration are starting to matter. The real value is not automation for its own sake, but the ability to guide decisions in real time, coordinate actions across previously disconnected functions, and keep the wider value chain in sync as conditions shift. In practice, that means breaking down long-standing silos between planning, procurement, production, logistics, and finance so that businesses can respond faster, allocate resources more effectively, and maintain service levels under pressure.
In an IDC survey from 2024, supply chain leaders cited advanced analytics and AI as their most important technology investment over the next three years. The top expected benefits of embedding AI into supply chain planning processes were improved decision-making, supplier selection, and inventory optimisation.
For African businesses, governments, and logistics operators, the lesson of 2026 is not that resilience investments have failed, but that more is needed to be done. Over the next five years, the continent’s supply chain challenges will go beyond simply building greater resilience to connecting what has been built into a system that can withstand a volatile, unpredictable world.
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