Why Africa’s supply chains are broken – Mbanefo

At 30, Godwin Obiora Mbanefo is trying to solve a problem most businesses in Nigeria have learned to live with: expensive, unreliable logistics. As founder of Yoris Africa, he’s building what he describes as an independent, African-owned logistics ecosystem. But in a market already crowded with logistics startups and littered with failed promises the obvious question is: what makes this different? In this interview with KENNETH ATHEKAME, he spoke about broken systems, bold ambitions, and how his model can actually scale. Excerpts:

Everyone says Africa’s logistics system is broken. What’s actually broken and what are people getting wrong about it?

People reduce it to infrastructure, bad roads, and congested ports. That’s part of it, but it’s not the core issue. The real problem is structural concentration. In Nigeria, logistics activity is clustered in places like Ikeja, Yaba, Victoria Island, Lekki. If your business operates outside those zones, your costs go up immediately, delivery takes longer, reliability drops, and fewer providers are willing to serve you. So, participation in the economy becomes location-dependent. That’s the real inefficiency.

That sounds structural, but also entrenched. Why hasn’t the market corrected it already?

Because the economics don’t favor expansion into low-density areas.

Logistics companies go where demand is predictable and concentrated. SMEs in underserved areas don’t generate enough consistent volume to justify the cost of serving them. So those areas stay excluded, and the cycle continues. It’s not just a logistics problem; it’s a visibility problem.

You’ve said SMEs are “invisible.” What does that actually mean in practice?

Most small businesses don’t have digital infrastructure. No website, no app, no structured inventory system. Many generate between $5,000 and $15,000 a year. At that level, investing in tech isn’t a priority, it’s survival first.

But without visibility, logistics companies can’t aggregate demand. And if they can’t see demand, they won’t build routes. So these businesses remain cut off from efficient supply chains.

So where does Yoris come in? What are you doing differently from existing logistics platforms?

We’re not just moving goods; we’re building an ecosystem. Traditional logistics platforms focus on transportation. We’re combining logistics with technology and business intelligence. The idea is to make businesses visible first, then connect that visibility to movement, financing, and growth tools.

If you solve only delivery, you’re solving one layer of the problem.

Ecosystem is a big word. What does that actually look like on the ground today, not five years from now?

today, we operate freight channels between China and markets like Nigeria and Ghana. We handle air and sea shipping, warehousing, and supplier verification.

So, if you’re a business sourcing from China, we reduce the friction payments, trust, logistics coordination.

That’s the current reality. The broader ecosystem is what we’re building toward.

Let’s talk about that broader vision. You’ve said you want last-mile coverage across all 54 African countries in five years. That’s extremely ambitious. Why is that realistic?

It’s ambitious, yes. But we’re not trying to build everything ourselves.

We’re taking a partnership-driven approach working with existing local players instead of deploying heavy capital in every market.

The opportunity is that logistics challenges across African countries are very similar. Once you build the right model, it becomes adaptable.

Many startups have tried pan-African expansion and struggled. What makes you think you won’t hit the same wall?

We’re not ignoring that risk. Expansion fails when companies assume uniformity. Ghana, for example, is more structured than Nigeria. Nigeria has more regulatory inconsistencies.

So the approach has to be localized execution on top of a shared framework. That’s why partnerships matter.

You often talk about decentralisation. How does that actually change outcomes for a small business owner?

Right now, if you’re not in a commercial hub, you’re disadvantaged.

Decentralisation means a business can operate digitally from anywhere and still access customers, logistics, and services. Once that happens, demand becomes distributed and logistics networks can expand more efficiently.

It reduces the cost gap between locations.

A lot of your model depends on technology adoption. But you’ve also said SMEs can’t afford tech. Isn’t that a contradiction?

It would be if the cost stays high. Our role is to lower that barrier. Technology should be accessible, not a luxury. If SMEs can plug into a system without heavy upfront investment, adoption increases. If we don’t solve that, the rest doesn’t work.

You’ve mentioned building a “super app” or what you call an African App Store. That space is crowded and difficult. Why go that route?

Godwin: Because fragmentation is a major problem. Businesses are using disconnected tools one for payments, another for logistics, another for communication. That fragmentation creates inefficiency.

The idea is to unify access: logistics, financial services, and business tools in one place. If done right, it simplifies operations for SMEs.

If done right it is doing a lot of work there. What’s the hardest part of making that succeed?

Trust. Technology is one part. But adoption depends on whether people trust the system, trust payments, trust deliveries, trust partners. Without that, even the best platform won’t scale.

You also talk about AI, blockchain, predictive analytics. How much of that is real today versus future positioning?

Some of it is foundational, some is forward-looking. Data is already central we use it to understand demand patterns and improve coordination. More advanced applications like predictive routing will scale as data volume increases. But we’re careful not to overpromise. These systems depend on consistent data, which takes time to build.

What’s the clearest proof today that Yoris is actually solving something meaningful?

The clearest proof is reduced friction for businesses sourcing internationally. We’ve seen cases where businesses that struggled with supplier trust, payments, and shipping delays are now operating more predictably through our system. It’s not perfect, and it’s not complete. But it’s a measurable improvement and that’s where scale starts.

Yoris Africa is trying to tackle a deeply entrenched problem with an equally expansive vision: connecting fragmented supply chains across the continent.

Whether it succeeds will depend less on ambition and more on execution in markets where logistics has defeated many well-funded attempts before. For now, the company sits somewhere between what it already is a cross-border logistics facilitator and what it hopes to become: infrastructure for African trade itself.