Africa’s reputation as a raw-materials exporter is well earned — but increasingly incomplete.
The African Development Bank puts the continent’s manufacturing value-added at $351bn in 2025, up from $285bn in 2020. That’s real growth. It’s also still less than 2% of global manufacturing output, which means there’s a long runway — and, for the right countries, a serious opportunity.
Here’s where things are actually moving:
Morocco: Cars, components, and batteries
Morocco has quietly become one of the world’s more interesting automotive manufacturing stories. Renault and Stellantis anchor a network of 250+ local and international suppliers, with local content now at about 69% — meaning this is far beyond kit assembly.
- Annual production capacity hit one million vehicles in 2025, with a target of two million by 2030
- Automotive exports reached a record $16.8bn in 2024
- Stellantis is spending €1.2bn to expand its Kenitra plant to 535,000 vehicles per year
- A Gotion gigafactory — starting at 10GWh, scaling to 100GWh — is in the pipeline for EV batteries
The formula: proximity to Europe, Tanger Med port, free trade agreements, and purpose-built industrial zones. Morocco didn’t wait for domestic demand to justify factories — it plugged into global supply chains instead.
South Africa: Industrial heritage, infrastructure headaches
South Africa is the continent’s broadest manufacturer — chemicals, metals, machinery, food processing, pharmaceuticals, and a flagship automotive sector that produced 618,077 vehicles and exported 414,271 in 2025.
Vehicle and component exports hit a record R291bn ($16bn) last year, accounting for 15.6% of all South African exports and 5.2% of GDP.
The catch? Electricity shortages, congested ports, weak investment, and sluggish growth are gnawing at competitiveness. South Africa is a useful reminder that holding onto an industrial base can be just as hard as building one.
Kenya: Regional market as engine
Kenya’s manufacturing story is built around serving a fast-urbanising population of 50m+ and reaching neighbours through the East African Community. Food processing (tea, coffee, flour, beer, edible oils), cement, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods are the pillars.
- GDP grew 4.7% in 2024 and 4.6% in 2025
- Construction grew 6.8% in 2025, driving demand for locally made cement
- Pharmaceutical manufacturing is developing, though active ingredients are still largely imported
The takeaway: supplying Africans can be as strategically important as supplying Europe.
Egypt: Scale, surplus, and structural friction
With 100m+ people, Suez Canal access, and competitive labour costs, Egypt punches across chemicals, fertilisers, steel, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and electrical appliances.
Exports hit $26bn in H1 2025 — up 19% year-on-year — with garments, fertilisers, food, and plastics leading the way.
The friction: manufacturers need foreign currency for machinery imports, reliable energy, and predictable policy. Currency shortages and inflation have periodically disrupted output even when demand holds firm.
Nigeria: Population as production catalyst
With 242m people, Nigeria’s domestic scale is an asset no other African market can match. Lagos anchors food, beverages, cement, and consumer goods manufacturing — with real manufacturing growth of 3.29% year-on-year in Q1 2026.
Cement is a standout. Dangote Cement alone has 32.25m tonnes of annual capacity in Nigeria and 55m tonnes across Africa, generating $3.1bn in revenue in 2025.
The headline act, though, is the $20bn Dangote Petroleum Refinery — 650,000 barrels per day of crude processing capacity. For a country that spent decades exporting crude and importing refined products, it’s a structural shift.
Currency volatility has also pushed manufacturers toward local sourcing: domestic raw material use across Nigerian manufacturing has risen above 57%.
Looking ahead…
The African Continental Free Trade Area has the potential to stitch these individual stories into something bigger — a 1.4bn-person market with cross-border supply chains and factories scaled for export. But tariffs are only part of the equation. Electricity reliability, logistics, financing costs, and skills gaps all feed into where manufacturers choose to invest.
Morocco’s progression — from assembling cars to making components to planning EV battery gigafactories — shows what the arc looks like when the conditions are right. The question for the rest of the continent is how many countries can replicate the journey, not just the destination.