Market access & friction across African borders
African entrepreneurs are often told to “think regional” or “go continental”. In reality, a Liberian skincare brand trying to reach Ghana, or a Kenyan clinic supplier trying to serve Uganda, faces a maze of friction: from paperwork and regulations to logistics and simple lack of visibility.
Layers of friction
Four main layers show up repeatedly:
- Discovery friction: buyers in one country don’t know which suppliers in another country are credible or active.
- Documentation & standards: different markets require different labels, registrations and paperwork that small businesses find hard to navigate.
- Logistics & last mile: moving small consignments across borders and into rural areas is expensive and complex.
- Trust & payment: buyers worry about pre paying unknown suppliers; suppliers worry about non payment and returns.
How shared infrastructure can help
OpenMarket Global does not fix customs laws or build trucks, but it can reduce friction on the information and trust side:
- Cross border discovery: a buyer in Ghana can search for Liberian or Nigerian suppliers of specific product types, seeing their verification status and partners.
- Standardised profiles: suppliers can show where they are registered, which labs or NGOs have validated them, and which countries they already serve.
- Partner logistics: as we grow, we can work with logistics providers and aggregators who specialise in moving small, verified consignments across borders.
Case pattern: regionalising a soap brand
Take a Nigerian cooperative soap brand that already serves a few domestic retailers. With the right packaging, basic documentation and a listing on OpenMarket Global, they could:
- Be discovered by hotels and retailers in Ghana and Benin via category and country filters.
- Be introduced to logistics partners who batch multiple small orders for cross border delivery.
- Accumulate a track record of regional orders that future partners and investors can see.
Recommendations for regional bodies & donors
Regional economic communities, trade facilitation programmes and donors can:
- Use marketplaces like OpenMarket Global as real time maps of cross border SME flows.
- Fund targeted support for promising suppliers to meet documentation and labelling standards.
- Support interoperable verification frameworks so that a product tested in one country can be recognised in others.
Why global action should act now
Without better market access infrastructure, we risk an Africa where imported brands flow freely across borders while local brands remain stuck in their home cities. That is a recipe for lost jobs, weaker resilience and unnecessary dependency.
By investing in and using platforms like OpenMarket Global, global and regional actors can lower the information and trust barriers that hold back African made products, helping them move as easily across borders as global brands do today.