Poor Infrastructure Drives Africa’s Trade Costs to 30% – Report
Africa’s push toward deeper regional integration is being severely undermined by crumbling and, in many cases, absent infrastructure, with logistics expenses consuming up to 30 percent of trade value across the continent, according to a new report from the African Export-Import Bank (AfreximBank).
The “Regional Integration and Market Access Insights” report for April 2026 paints a stark picture of the cost disadvantage facing African traders. Estimates cited from the World Bank indicate that logistics costs account for approximately 25 to 30 percent of trade value in Africa, a figure that dwarfs the eight to 10 percent recorded in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies and the 12 to 14 percent observed in Asia. Despite various recovery efforts, intra-African trade remains sluggish, with external trade still accounting for over 80 percent of the continent’s total trade activity.
The report identifies a defining shift toward corridor-based integration as the most viable remedy. Rather than pursuing isolated national projects, investments are increasingly being coordinated along strategic trade routes to ensure the seamless movement of goods across interconnected transport, energy, and digital systems.
This approach is most evident in West Africa, where integration efforts are anchored on the 1,028-kilometre Abidjan–Lagos Highway Corridor linking Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. The project reached a key milestone in 2026 with the operationalisation of the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Management Authority. “Progress in multimodal connectivity is reinforcing this role, with freight services along Nigeria’s Lagos–Kano Standard Gauge Railway extending connectivity toward the Niger border, while digital integration at the Sèmè–Kraké One-Stop Border Post has reduced average truck dwell time from several days to under 12 hours,” the report stated.
Beyond West Africa, East Africa is witnessing gains driven by the transition from fragmented border procedures to fully digitised trade facilitation systems. Meanwhile, Central Africa is undergoing a more structural transition, with the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) shifting from a raw-resource export model toward a transformation-at-source industrial strategy.
Central to this shift is the Africa Trade Competitiveness and Market Access Programme (ATCMA), launched in March 2026, which is supporting regional value chains in wood, cocoa, and cassava. Following the region-wide ban on raw timber exports, investment is increasingly directed toward downstream processing in Gabon and Cameroon. The report further noted that construction along the Kribi–Bangui–Kisangani corridor is reducing transit times by approximately 25 percent, while regional transmission agreements under the Grand Inga initiative are expected to lower industrial electricity costs by up to 15 percent.