Africa’s Logistics Revolution: How Chinese Ports and Railways Are Redrawing Trade Routes

Africa’s trade future is being quietly but decisively rewritten. Not in policy rooms alone, but across rail tracks, port terminals, and highways stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic coast.

For decades, the continent’s greatest constraint has not been production – it has been movement. According to the African Development Bank, Africa faces an annual infrastructure financing gap of up to $100 billion, with logistics inefficiencies inflating the cost of trade by as much as 40%. The result: goods that are produced competitively struggle to reach markets efficiently.