While France Supply Chain accelerates its international development through its Chapters, on September 22, 2022 a focus on Africa was presented by Xavier Personnic, GO to Africa Expert.

Reminder of some fundamentals AFRICA

Africa is often cited as a land of opportunity and therefore a market worth exploring for companies seeking growth, but ultimately difficult to characterize because its business and operational models are largely unknown.

It is difficult to strike a balance between sometimes naive "Afro-optimism" and "Afro-pessimism," which reflects a lack of understanding of local economies.

The deployment of B2C/B2B solutions is often impossible to "copy and paste" from mature Western models, and it is clear that the economic models that have been Asia's strength for 25 years are not or can only be replicated to a limited extent in Africa (the continent will not be the new "world factory").

This conference was divided into several parts:

You can find all the summaries and replays of this conference on our Youtube channel.

Updated on December 8, 2026

Questioning this African market as a whole is a challenge. Indeed:

• The continent's area is larger than the combined surface area of the United States, China, India, Japan, and all of Western Europe.
• Among the 54 countries, there are significant disparities in size, economic situation, population, education system, political governance, financial system, and access to financing (with rates that are too often "usurious"), culture, food self-sufficiency, reserves of "global" raw materials, arable land and forest area, access to the sea, and finally, maturity in transport & logistics/supply chain, etc.
• Seven countries accounted for ~70% of Africa's GDP in 2024; conversely, 37 countries accounted for only 12.5% of the continent's ~$3 trillion GDP (comparable to that of France).
• The demographic outlook over the next 25 years is unique in the world (a generation to go from 1.2 billion inhabitants in Africa to 2.5 billion in 2050), with again significant differences in terms of demographic transition.
• There has been a diversification of partnerships with the rest of the world, limiting its dependencies, but again with a wide variety of interests depending on the country.

Each country must therefore be addressed specifically. However, certain countries play a more central role due to their geographical and economic positioning. This regional perspective can therefore be a major factor in the development of certain sectors of activity.

 It is important to note that the "Cost To Serve" in Africa is generally much higher than in Europe, the US, or Asia. This "Cost To Serve" is influenced by specific Supply Chain criteria and the so-called "traditional" GO TO MARKET criteria presented below.