Africa's e-commerce landscape is booming. The market is projected to reach 75bn a year by 2028, with more than half a billion consumers expected to be active on online platforms. In Nigeria alone, fashion already accounts for around 20 of all business-to-consumer e-commerce sales, driven by a strong preference for locally made products. With Africa's population on course to represent a quarter of the global total, the continent has a genuine opportunity not only to clothe itself, but to shape global fashion trends.
Yet this local momentum masks a deeper structural weakness. African trade remains stubbornly extroverted, with economic systems designed to export raw value to global markets such as China and the EU rather than circulate it within the continent. Intra-African trade accounts for just 16 of total African trade, far below the levels seen in Europe or Asia. In 2024, Africa's total merchandise trade reached 1.5tn, but only 220.3bn of that was conducted within the continent.
For fashion micro, small and medium-sized enterprises MSMEs, this reality creates an artificially constrained "local market". Only 8 of Africa's textile and apparel imports are supplied by other African countries. As a result, it is often cheaper and easier for a designer in Nairobi to source fabric from China than from a neighbouring producer in Tanzania. While the African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA could increase intra-African trade by as much as 50 by 2040, its benefits remain largely theoretical for small creative businesses, blocked by payment friction, logistics bottlenecks and fragmented systems.
