The widely touted belief that Africa only produces raw materials to export is not supported by the facts. The continent has viable industries in some centres, although broader industrialisation remains a work in progress. Neil Ford presents mini-profiles of Africa’s major manufacturing nations.
Most of Africa has relied on exporting raw materials and importing manufactured products made from them throughout the colonial and independence periods. Copper, cobalt, cocoa, cotton and crude oil are all shipped from African ports, while vehicles, chemicals, processed foods, textiles and electronics arrive in the opposite direction. Changing that trade balance has become one of the continent’s most important economic ambitions.
There are some signs that it is beginning to happen. The African Development Bank’s Africa Industrialisation Index 2025 estimates that African manufacturing value-added increased from $285bn in 2020 to $351bn in 2025. Yet Africa still accounts for less than 2% of global manufacturing output and just 1.4% of global manufactured exports.
However, the continent does make more than many assume. South Africa manufactures cars, chemicals, steel, machinery, processed food and pharmaceuticals. Morocco has developed automotive and aerospace industries, while Egypt produces fertilisers, chemicals, textiles and electrical equipment. Kenya has important food processing, cement, consumer goods and pharmaceutical industries, while Nigeria produces cement, food, beverages and other consumer products.
Industrialisation matters because processing agricultural products and minerals locally allows countries to capture more of their value, while factories create employment and support suppliers and logistics companies.
The continent is currently heavily dependent on producing more basic goods, including foodstuffs and construction materials. These industries are important, but as East and South Asia have shown over many decades, industrialisation becomes particularly transformative when countries progress into more sophisticated sectors that generate exports and support large domestic supply chains.
Morocco: building cars for the world
Few African manufacturing industries have expanded as rapidly as Morocco’s automotive sector. Renault and Stellantis now anchor a network of more than 250 local and international automotive and component companies. Moroccan industry minister Ryad Mezzour said in late 2025 that the country had reached an annual production capacity of one million vehicles, with a target of two million by 2030.
Local content has reached about 69%, meaning the industry extends far beyond simply assembling imported kits. Morocco produces seats, wiring harnesses, tyres and numerous other components alongside finished vehicles. Exports are driving this investment. The country exported a record D157bn ($16.8bn) of automotive products in 2024.
Stellantis announced a €1.2bn expansion of its Kenitra complex in 2025 that will more than double capacity to 535,000 vehicles a year. Production includes conventional cars alongside small electric vehicles such as the Citroën Ami, Fiat Topolino and Opel Rocks-e.
Morocco is also moving into EV batteries. The planned Gotion gigafactory in Kenitra will initially have an annual capacity of 10GWh, with longer-term plans to reach 100GWh. The AfDB has approved $110m of financing for the first phase.
Morocco’s experience demonstrates that African manufacturing does not have to depend primarily on domestic demand. Proximity to Europe, the Tanger Med port, free trade agreements and industrial zones have allowed it to become part of global manufacturing supply chains.
South Africa: the continent’s industrial heavyweight
South Africa offers a different model to the rest of Africa because its manufacturing base is so broad. Gauteng, Durban and the Eastern Cape support industries ranging from chemicals and metals to machinery, food processing and vehicles.
Automotive manufacturing remains its flagship. South Africa produced 618,077 vehicles in 2025, with BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen all manufacturing in the country. It exported a record 414,271 vehicles in 2025, with Germany the biggest market, followed by the UK, France, Belgium and Italy.
The impact on the wider economy is impressive. Vehicle and component exports reached a record R291bn ($16bn) in 2025 and accounted for 15.6% of all South African exports. Automotive manufacturing generated 23.8% of the value added by the entire manufacturing sector, and the broader automotive industry contributed 5.2% of GDP.
Yet electricity shortages, congested ports and railways, weak investment and sluggish economic growth have undermined competitiveness. South Africa demonstrates that maintaining an existing industrial base can sometimes be as challenging as creating one.
Kenya: targeting manufacturing diversity
Nairobi and the industrial corridor linking it with Mombasa support food and beverage processing, cement, pharmaceuticals, plastics, chemicals, steel products and consumer goods manufacturing, helping to drive growth of 4.7% in 2024 and 4.6% in 2025.
Kenya’s manufacturers can supply a domestic population of more than 50m while using the East African Community to target other neighbouring markets. Food processing is particularly important. Tea and coffee processing, flour milling, edible oils, beer and packaged foods turn crop cultivation into higher value products. Companies such as East African Breweries, Bidco Africa and Unga Group have built businesses around domestic and regional demand.
Cement and construction materials are another important manufacturing segment. Construction grew by 6.8% in 2025 after contracting by 0.7% in 2024, while mining and quarrying expanded by 14.9%, partly because of an increased production of minerals used to manufacture cement.
Kenya also has one of sub-Saharan Africa’s more developed pharmaceutical manufacturing sectors, producing tablets, capsules and syrups, but it still imports many finished pharmaceuticals and the active ingredients used by domestic manufacturers.
The domestic market is playing a huge role in driving investment, as urbanisation and population growth are creating enormous demand for food, construction materials, medicines and consumer goods. Supplying Africans can be as important as supplying Europe.
Egypt: manufacturing at the crossroads of three continents
With a population exceeding 100m, relatively low labour costs, the Suez Canal, major ports and proximity to European, Middle Eastern and African markets, Egypt also represents a diverse manufacturing sector, although the state still plays too big a role in economic life.
It produces chemicals, fertilisers, steel, cement, processed food, textiles and clothing, pharmaceuticals and electrical appliances.
Exports demonstrate that this is more than import-substitution. The country exported $26bn-worth of goods in the first half of 2025, up 19% on the same period in 2024. Ready-made garments accounted for $1.6bn of those exports, fertilisers $1.4bn, food preparations and pasta $1.1bn and primary-form plastics $790m.
Egypt nevertheless demonstrates another African problem: having factories is not enough. Manufacturers need foreign currency to import machinery and components, dependable energy, predictable economic policy and access to financing. Currency shortages and inflation have periodically disrupted manufacturers even when demand remains strong.
Nigeria: the advantages of scale
Scale gives Nigeria a different advantage: scale. With 242m people, Nigeria offers one of Africa’s largest concentrations of food, beverages, cement, consumer goods and building-material manufacturing around Lagos. Output is growing but not spectacularly, with real manufacturing growth of 3.29% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026.
Cement is one of the clearest success stories. Dangote Cement has 32.25m tonnes a year of production capacity in Nigeria and 55m tonnes across Africa. It sold 27.5m tonnes of cement and clinker across the group in 2025 and generated revenue of N4.31trn ($3.1bn).
There is also plenty of competition in the form of Bua Cement and Lafarge Africa. Nigeria has also developed huge food and drink industries, encompassing breweries, flour mills, sugar refining, noodles and packaged foods.
The most dramatic recent example of Nigerian industrialisation lies outside traditional consumer manufacturing. The $20bn Dangote Petroleum Refinery near Lagos has the capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
Its emergence is particularly significant because Nigeria spent decades exporting crude oil while importing much of the petrol, diesel and other refined products it consumed. The complex is also developing petrochemical production, potentially creating feedstock for further manufacturing.
Yet unreliable electricity, congested ports, expensive financing and currency instability add to manufacturers’
costs. The naira’s sharp depreciation in 2023 and 2024 increased the price of imported machinery and raw materials but also encouraged some import substitution.
Some Nigerian manufacturers turned to local sourcing as a result. Chemical and Allied Products, for example, now obtains about 90% of its calcium carbonate domestically, while the proportion of local raw materials used across Nigerian manufacturing has risen to more than 57%.
Can Africa make the leap?
These examples demonstrate that there is no single African manufacturing model. Morocco uses infrastructure and access to Europe to manufacture cars for export. South Africa relies on industrial capabilities built over generations. Kenya serves a growing regional market. Egypt combines a huge domestic economy with export manufacturing, while Nigeria is trying to turn population growth into increased manufacturing potential.
The African Continental Free Trade Area could eventually connect these models. A continental market of more than 1.4bn people would allow manufacturers to develop cross-border supply chains and reach markets large enough to justify bigger factories.
Yet tariffs are only part of the problem. Manufacturers also compare electricity costs and reliability, logistics efficiency, lending costs, workforce skills and local suppliers. Industrial policy cannot compensate indefinitely for weaknesses in all of them.
There is also a danger of defining success too loosely. Processing food and producing cement locally are valuable achievements, but genuine industrialisation requires economies to develop increasingly sophisticated capabilities. Morocco’s progression from vehicle assembly towards components and now EV batteries is a prime example.
Africa is therefore industrialising, but not yet fast enough. Manufacturing value added of $351bn sounds substantial until it is set against Africa’s population and the continent’s tiny share of global manufacturing.
The challenge is to turn individual successes into interconnected African supply chains in which raw materials cross borders to factories, components move between manufacturing centres, and finished products are sold across Africa and overseas. ‘Made in Africa’ then becomes a development strategy and not just a little more than an aspirational label.
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Africa’s manufacturing champions
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