Africa’s exporters and manufacturers are absorbing higher costs and more frequent production interruptions as geopolitical shifts, shipping bottlenecks and fragile transport and power systems expose the continent’s supply-chain weaknesses. Delegates at the second African Centre for Supply Chain conference warned that reliance on overseas suppliers and narrow transport corridors leaves firms vulnerable to price spikes and output gaps.
Obiora Madu, director general of the African Centre for Supply Chain, told the conference that strategies built around narrow efficiency goals no longer protect firms from large shocks. "Prior to now, everybody talks about efficiency, wanting to be efficient. Efficiency is not enough any longer because disruption will kill you completely," he said, urging business leaders to reorient toward resilience and supplier diversification.
Madu also highlighted rising energy costs and the growing turn to alternative power sources inside firms, arguing that resilient systems can be human, technological or equipment based. "Everybody is trying his own way. This resilient infrastructure can be people. It can be technology. It can be equipment to deal with energy," he said, and recommended greater use of rail and inland waterways to ease pressure on road networks and cut logistics bills, adding, "We know that railway is the best for all."
Frank Ojadi, professor of operations management at Lagos Business School, said the competitive edge for African economies will come from maintaining production and distribution when global disruption hits. "The next competitive advantage for African economies will not simply be the ability to produce more. It will be the ability to continue producing, moving and delivering when the world at our loss is disrupted," he said. Ojadi urged countries to weave specialised, regional supply chains under AfCFTA and to deploy digital tools including artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, Internet of Things, satellite data and digital platforms to spot risks earlier. "Foresight does not mean predicting exactly what will happen. Foresight asks a different question: What will happen and what will we do if it happens?" he added.
Olasunkanmi Ojowuro, director of mechanical engineering at the Lagos State ministry of transportation, linked resilient supply chains directly to transport investment. "Resilience cannot be built after the crisis arrives. It must be engineered before the crisis," he said, calling for coordinated spending on roads, railways, waterways, ports and data-driven transport systems to buttress logistics.
Speakers framed resilience not only as protection against disruption but as an industrial opportunity: stronger local production, more jobs and deeper intra-African trade. They said delivering that shift will require coordinated public investment in multi-modal logistics, firm-level capital spending on energy and digital systems, and policy alignment under AfCFTA to cut dependence on single external markets.
