Consumer goods markets in Africa have over the past 10-20 years become increasingly interesting for international companies. Growing overall populations and especially the growing middle class have motivated companies from around the world to expand their footprint on the continent. One learning during this process is that Africa is more diverse than previously assumed. This…
Glass has innumerable applications like building, construction and packaging among others. africon did an analysis for a chemicals manufacturer to understand glass production in Africa, by looking at 5 major countries involved in the process. These were Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Egypt clearly emerged as the leading country in glass manufacturing, followed by…
Agri processing is often referred to as one of the most promising areas for many African countries to develop their economies. In this project, africon was tasked to prioritise countries and sectors to (in a next stage) efficiently identify potential customers for a client. The sugar industry, as one of the evaluated industries, scored a…
africon recently completed stage 1 of a project for a client from the textile industry. As a supplier of machines for making ropes, the first key question on the way to developing an Africa strategy was “where can we find local manufacturing of ropes in Africa?”. africon answered this question through a combination of industry…
Over the past years, a strong reform drive has helped the Ivory Coast to become one of West Africa’s most interesting markets. Growth rates of consistently more than 7% p.a. make the country a promising target market for suppliers of all kinds of industrial machinery. However, when managing market entry, it is important to not…
For an increasingly digital world, fast internet is a key driver of growth. As anywhere else, internet speeds in Africa vary greatly between countries as this slide shows: while for example Madagascar has a download speed of around 32 Mb/s, faster than that of the UK, and countries like Ghana and South Africa have speeds…
The automotive aftermarket is one of the key sectors of opportunities in Africa – not just for Germany, but for many global automotive nations as well. However, many international automotive firms face challenges when doing business in Africa as markets function differently compared to other parts of the world – and within Africa itself. The…
Africa‘s chemical industries have experienced enormous growth over the past decades. Though at a smaller scale, various markets in Africa offer substantial market opportunities for global chemical companies. One of them is our client for this project. Taking a certain set of chemicals in our client‘s portfolio, the project objective was to identify the most…
The impressive growth of Ethiopia over the past decade has put the country on the map in the consumer goods business. In this project, africon identified and recommended potential distribution partners for the client locally. After meeting approximately 20 consumer goods distributors, africon rated and ranked the firms according to key performance indicators previously agreed…
South Africa’s construction sector is one of the largest in Africa and currently worth about 15 billion USD while contributing 4% to the country’s GDP. Unfortunately, it has been in recession since 2017. The overall growth rate in the past decade has been relatively low at only 2.47%. A struggling economy and a 12% reduction…
