Farai Mabeza
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating a much larger market for Africa’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), giving businesses an opportunity to sell beyond their home markets and participate in supply chains across the continent.
ZimTrade says the scale of the opportunity is significant. Africa imported goods worth approximately US$506 billion in 2025, yet only about US$65 billion came from within the continent.
According to ZimTrade, intra-African imports therefore accounted for just 12.8 percent of Africa’s total imports, with about US$441 billion sourced from outside the continent. China alone supplied approximately US$99 billion worth of goods to African markets.
“These figures point to a sizeable market that African businesses, including Zimbabwean MSMEs, can increasingly target as the AfCFTA improves conditions for trade between participating countries,” ZimTrade said.
For small businesses, the opportunity extends beyond producing finished goods for export. Regional value chains can provide a more accessible entry point into continental markets.
A Zimbabwean packaging company, for instance, could supply a food processor in Zambia, while an agro-processing business could provide ingredients to a manufacturer in Kenya. Engineering firms could supply components to larger industrial companies elsewhere in Africa.
ZimTrade said such arrangements allow smaller firms to enter regional markets progressively, build production capacity and develop relationships with buyers without immediately having to establish expensive distribution networks.
The organisation also sees room for African businesses to capture some of the market currently served by suppliers from outside the continent.
“Replacing even a small share of those imports with African products could result in billions of dollars in additional intra-African trade and create opportunities for manufacturers, farmers, processors and service providers,” ZimTrade said.
Global supply-chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions and rising transport costs are also increasing the importance of regional suppliers, according to ZimTrade. This gives African MSMEs an incentive to identify products that countries across the continent are already importing and assess where they can compete.
A major hurdle, however, is scale. Small businesses can struggle to fulfil large orders even when they have competitive products.
ZimTrade points to aggregation as one possible solution, allowing producers to combine output through organised groups, trading companies or similar structures. The AfCFTA SME Booster Programme has highlighted trading-company models in Ghana, Egypt, Rwanda and Kenya.
There are already signs of increasing intra-African trade. Uganda’s imports from African markets rose from approximately US$5 billion in 2024 to US$8.6 billion in 2025, while Zimbabwe’s imports from African countries increased from about US$3.4 billion in 2018 to US$5.2 billion in 2025.
For Africa’s MSMEs, the next step is to turn the continent’s demand into a market for African-made goods and services.
