In “How Africa Works,” published this year, Joe Studwell describes Africa as the last major untapped market. Drawing on seven years of fieldwork and documentary research, he argues that sparse populations have long held back economic development and industrialization: consumer markets were fragmented, water and electricity networks were expensive to build for relatively few users, and specialized supply chains struggled to emerge.
Africa’s population has also grown rapidly, rising from about 1.2 billion in 2014 to more than 1.5 billion in 2024, with further growth projected in the coming decades. Rising population density can spread the cost of water, electricity, roads, and logistics, supporting larger consumer markets and a more specialized division of labor.
According to Chinese customs data, trade between China and Africa reached USD 348 billion in 2025, nearly double the amount recorded in 2015. China has remained Africa’s largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years.
Chinese-made smartphones, motorcycles, solar products, and everyday goods are reaching buyers across the continent. Consumer electronics from Shenzhen move through distribution hubs such as Lagos and Nairobi, while goods made in Yiwu fill open-air markets, family-run shops, and roadside stalls.
Liao Xuhui was among the early arrivals. Around 2000, he began sourcing surplus textiles in Shenzhen for a friend working in Africa. In 2003, he left a stable job in China and used RMB 300,000 (USD 44,700) he had scraped together to buy VCD players in Shenzhen and wholesale them in Togo. Electronics were in short supply, and he quickly made his first substantial profits.
When unrest broke out in Togo in 2005, Liao moved his team to a neighboring country for safety. A local employee stayed behind to look after the warehouse until order returned. The experience strengthened his commitment to building a business in Africa.
Between 2006 and 2008, he expanded from Togo into nearly 20 markets across West, Central, and East Africa. He also launched his own home appliance brand, Leadder, selling DVD players, speakers, televisions, and other audiovisual products.
He then changed direction again, founding the cross-border e-commerce platform Toafrica, which became Amanbo in 2015. The venture began three years before African e-commerce platforms such as Jumia appeared and a decade before Chinese sellers began entering African e-commerce markets in large numbers. Online shopping was still developing in China and remained unfamiliar to many African consumers.
Amanbo was among China’s earliest cross-border e-commerce platforms focused on Africa and has been designated a key digital economy cooperation project with Africa by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It has local operations centers and overseas warehouses in countries including Cameroon, Kenya, Togo, and Ivory Coast, serves more than 30 major African markets, and connects 10,000 Chinese suppliers with more than 200,000 African business customers.
Starting so early brought problems Liao had not anticipated. In many countries, internet connections ran at speeds as low as five kilobytes per second, and webpages could take minutes to open. Power failed three or four times a day, cutting connections. Beyond capital cities, poor roads made delivery impractical. He experimented with offline product databases and his own Wi-Fi networks before reaching a conclusion: a business can get ahead of its market, but only by so much.
After more than two decades working in Africa, Liao still shares Studwell’s confidence in its economic prospects. But opportunity, he said, requires patience.
“African e-commerce has only begun to gain scale in the past three to five years,” Liao said. “The preceding years were spent developing the market. Most businesses that could not endure that wait have left.”
The following transcript has been edited and consolidated for brevity and clarity.
36Kr: How did you make your first profits in Africa?
Liao Xuhui (LX): I first became involved in Africa around 2000. A friend was posted there, and I helped arrange purchases in China while based in Shenzhen. After a few shipments, I realized this was an overlooked market with enormous potential.
In 2003, I started wholesaling VCD players in Togo with RMB 300,000. It was a seller’s market. A standard 20-foot container of goods cost RMB 300,000 to buy in China and could sell for RMB 600,000 (USD 89,500) after arrival. After freight, customs clearance, and other costs, net profit was nearly RMB 200,000 (USD 29,800) per container.
From 2006 to 2008, we expanded rapidly from Togo into Cameroon, Tanzania, and other countries, reaching nearly 20 markets across West, Central, and East Africa. We also launched Leadder, our own home appliance brand, focusing on DVD players, speakers, and other audiovisual products. Within three years, it ranked among the industry’s top three in West Africa.
36Kr: How did you promote Leadder?
LX: Elaborate campaigns were unnecessary. What worked was getting close to everyday life.
We had no money for advertising when we started the brand, so we focused on familiar local settings. Porters carried goods through wholesale markets all day. We gave them T-shirts with our logo, turning them into walking advertisements. We also gave taxi drivers gifts and asked them to put brand stickers on their cars, creating mobile advertising across the city.
Internet use was low, and even television was far from widespread. The online and TV advertising we knew from China could not reach our main customers. These local approaches worked best.
36Kr: What do Chinese merchants often misunderstand about African markets?
LX: The biggest mistake is treating Africa as one uniform market. Its 1.6 billion people live in 54 separate national markets. There is no single approach that works everywhere. Many merchants want to sell across Africa before they understand even one country. They are bound to run into trouble.
Product standards offer a straightforward example. Former French colonies use European-style plugs with two round pins, while former British colonies use British-style plugs with three rectangular pins. If an appliance has the wrong plug, you cannot sell it.
Preferences differ, too. East African consumers put more emphasis on practicality and favor models with USB ports and card readers. West African consumers prefer more fully featured products, seeing extra functions as better value.
There are also significant cultural and religious differences. Muslims account for a large share of the population in North and West Africa, while East Africa is predominantly Christian. Product design and marketing need to fit local customs and religious practices.
36Kr: By 2008, your brand was among the industry’s top three in West Africa. Why switch to an e-commerce platform?
LX: There were three main reasons. I was among the first people in China to work in e-commerce, starting in 1998, so I paid close attention to it. E-commerce was growing quickly in China, and Alibaba Group was preparing to go public. That helped me see the potential for the model in Africa.
The 2008 financial crisis also hit traditional wholesaling, and growth in our offline business had stalled. On top of that, running our own brand alongside the wholesale business created channel conflicts that upset distributors. Taken together, those factors led us to build an online platform.
But the basic conditions for e-commerce were worse than we had imagined. Internet connections ran at just five kilobytes per second. A webpage took minutes to open, and product images would not load. Power failed three or four times a day, so the connection could drop at any moment. Roads were poor, and delivery was largely unavailable beyond central areas of capital cities.
We tried approaches that look cumbersome now. We developed an offline product database that users could download at a physical store, browse at home, and then return to the store to synchronize their orders. We built Wi-Fi sites in large wholesale markets so merchants could get online.
We redesigned the interface three times, spent a great deal of money, and made countless mistakes. The lesson was that innovation can be one step ahead of the market, but not many steps. If you start before the infrastructure is ready, you risk becoming an early casualty.
African e-commerce has only begun to gain scale in the past three to five years. The preceding years were spent developing the market. Most businesses that could not endure that wait have left.
36Kr: Beyond internet speeds, electricity, and roads, what other difficulties did you face in Africa?
LX: The central problem was that landed costs exceeded what local customers could afford. A T-shirt selling for RMB 9.9 (USD 1.5) in China could cost USD 15 in logistics alone to ship by air to the customer. Delivery cost more than the product. Price it high enough to cover that cost, and ordinary consumers cannot afford it; price it lower, and you lose money.
That leaves cross-border B2C e-commerce in a bind. The mismatch between low purchasing power and high landed costs will not disappear quickly.
Returns are expensive, too. Cross-border e-commerce has an average return rate of 20–30%, and a returned item incurs another international shipping charge. Almost any return means a loss.
36Kr: How large is Africa’s online retail market today?
LX: Online sales account for only 5–8% of total retail sales, mainly among young consumers with middle or high incomes. More than 90% of transactions still happen offline, through wholesale markets, open-air markets, supermarkets, family-run shops, and street vendors.
A purely online business effectively gives up 95% of the market and targets a small group with the most demanding service expectations. That makes it difficult to build scale.
36Kr: If an online-only business does not work, what kind of e-commerce model fits Africa?
LX: After years of trial and error, we found that selling in Africa requires an omnichannel approach. I developed an OSO model: online, social, and offline.
The online component is our official marketplace; the offline component consists of partner shops and outlets. Social includes Facebook and TikTok, but also places where people meet in person, such as churches and markets. We provide a social marketing platform called AMP, or Amanbo Marketing Partner.
The aim is to help offline merchants, rather than take their business. We help them turn their existing customer relationships into a digital customer base, while directing online customers to physical outlets for fulfillment. That fits the market and gives the model a way to work over the long term.
People often ask whether Africa will eventually produce a platform like Taobao or Pinduoduo. Perhaps, but not now. Internet and electricity infrastructure must improve. Logistics networks need to reach smaller towns and rural communities. People need to become accustomed to online payments, and purchasing power needs to rise. All of that will take more than three to five years.
I started an online-only business in 2009, a full decade too early, and spent heavily on market education. Anyone arriving today with the idea of copying China’s model to create an “African Taobao” will probably end up laying the groundwork for someone else.
Businesses have to follow the market’s stage of development. You cannot skip steps. Start with an offline presence and an omnichannel business, grow alongside the market, and establish yourself before the opportunity fully arrives.
36Kr: What can Amanbo offer merchants looking for opportunities in Africa today?
LX: We are adjusting our products and services based on our assessment of China-Africa cooperation and artificial intelligence’s impact on the industry. Our commitment to Africa remains unchanged.
We plan to make as much of the Amanbo platform as possible free for users in China and overseas. We will bring together domestic and international partners to provide efficient fulfillment and local support, alongside financial products such as supply chain finance, cross-border settlement, and installment payments.
The aim is to build closer working relationships among users and partners, helping businesses expand overseas together and creating a broader network for China-Africa cooperation in the AI era.
Beyond the marketplace, we offer support ranging from basic guidance on doing business between China and Africa and assessing product suitability to market research, validation of commercial opportunities, sales channel development, overseas brand expansion, project consulting, and ongoing support for industrial expansion.
Amanbo will no longer position itself simply as an e-commerce platform. It is becoming a comprehensive service platform for China-Africa cooperation, built on its digital infrastructure.
36Kr: What opportunities do you see in Africa beyond e-commerce?
LX: There is far more to Africa than e-commerce.
Over the next five to ten years, expanding industrial operations overseas will be a major trend. Southeast Asia is already intensely competitive. Competition is much less fierce in Africa’s market of 1.6 billion people. Businesses can also use the African Continental Free Trade Area for onward trade. It covers 54 countries and has zero tariffs on trade within the region: build a factory in one country, and you can sell across Africa without tariffs. That offers a very large market.
When choosing a location for industrial operations, look for political stability, supportive free trade area policies, low labor costs, access to a coast and port for logistics if possible, and proximity to customers or markets. The main clusters currently include Morocco and Egypt in North Africa, Kenya in East Africa, Lagos and Ghana in West Africa, and South Africa.
There are also opportunities to import African goods into China. Many now qualify for zero tariffs. Beef and mutton from Africa can be processed into dried meat products and shipped to China at much lower cost than domestic alternatives, with good quality. Coffee, cocoa, nuts, and minerals can also be competitively priced imports because of their quality and low cost.
It is best to develop both imports and exports to help offset exchange rate risk. If you trade in only one direction, a currency depreciation can easily wipe out your profit through foreign exchange losses.
Traditional trade, brand representation, local distribution, trade in services, and project investment also remain relatively open to new entrants compared with China. E-commerce is only one route.
36Kr: Many merchants worry about poor roads, power shortages, and slow internet in Africa. How do you view those infrastructure problems?
LX: If all the roads were already built, what would you be coming for?
Once infrastructure is complete, local businesses have grown, and large European and American companies have arrived, what room is left for small and midsize merchants? Shenzhen faced shortages, too, 20 years ago. This is about the stage of development, not race or culture. These problems get resolved as development progresses.
Poor roads create demand for roadbuilding. Power shortages create demand for power stations. Weak internet access calls for networks, and inadequate logistics calls for logistics services. Each gap is a concrete opportunity. The size of the problem you can solve determines the size of the market you can win.
Africa is at a point where growth is beginning to take off. Population density has crossed the threshold needed for economies of scale, and markets are starting to develop. Entering now offers a chance to grow with them.
36Kr: Some merchants may think local employees in Africa are difficult to manage or worry about safety. How do you respond to those perceptions?
LX: The problem is not the people. It is the management approach. Respect for local people is fundamental.
During the unrest in Togo in 2005, all our Chinese employees took refuge in a neighboring country. A local employee with whom we had a good relationship risked his safety to guard our warehouse for 10 months. Not a single item went missing.
The pandemic demonstrated the same point. Many companies that depended on Chinese staff to oversee operations on-site ground to a halt. We had localized early, and more than 90% of our staff were local. They kept the business running, greatly reducing the disruption and losses.
36Kr: What practical advice would you give small and midsize merchants looking at Africa now?
LX: First, decide whether you want to trade, run an e-commerce business, or invest in a factory. Then choose the country and customers before selecting products. Getting the market and customers right matters even more than choosing the product. The right choice makes the work much easier; effort alone will not rescue the wrong one.
Do not assume that experience in China transfers directly. If possible, visit, understand the market, and then act. Do not try to do everything yourself. Localize as much as you can, hire local people, and trust them, while maintaining proper oversight.
Look beyond e-commerce to traditional trade, brands, manufacturing, imports, and investment. If you choose cross-border e-commerce, avoid products that are too cheap or too heavy: the logistics costs will overwhelm you. Look for differentiated products that customers cannot readily buy locally.
Finally, proceed gradually. Test small quantities, make sure the business works, and expand from there. Going all in at the outset is a quick way to fail.
KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Feng Yaling for 36Kr.
Note: RMB figures are converted to USD at rates of RMB 6.70 = USD 1 based on estimates as of September 21, 2026, unless otherwise stated. USD conversions are approximate and, where appropriate, rounded for ease of reference. They may not fully match prevailing exchange rates.