This is the second in our three-part series on how the three rails of payments, trade and identity are being rebuilt across Africa at once. The first piece looked at payments. This one looks at the trade rail.

For years, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was discussed as a dream that was far ahead of its infrastructure. The roads, ports, rail networks and the digital backbone were not there yet. That’s changing.

In the last two months alone, several developments have changed the landscape:

• ADAPT has launched as the digital backbone of the AfCFTA (per ENS Africa)
• The Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia digital trade corridor has gone into pilot
• South Africa’s rail legal architecture has been finalised, with eleven private operators, including RC South Africa, TLD Marine, MENAR and Grindrod
• The World Bank has approved a programme worth some US$1.12 billion for one of Central Africa’s key trade routes

Taking these together, we can see that the physical rail is being rebuilt at the same time as the digital rail, which we discussed in part one of this series.

Africa’s trade rail is being re-laid on three parallel fronts: the policy and digital backbone, the physical rebuild and the external connectivity with the rest of the world. Vendors selling into any one of these fronts will underestimate the compression happening in the other two. Here is why we think so.

The digital backbone is now in place

ADAPT is the AfCFTA’s new digital protocol that gives the agreement a common, instrumented way to move trade data, documentation and settlement across borders.

Afreximbank’s latest work frames the AfCFTA as the central lever for the continent’s trade and investment potential, and Standard Bank’s Africa Trade Barometer now shows trade-enabling infrastructure improving rather than stalling.

ADAPT moves the AfCFTA beyond being just a framework, and alert vendors can see that the conversation has a new urgency.

South Africa’s rail revival is advancing at pace

For years, South African rail was woefully underutilised. The recently completed legal architecture for private participation in freight rail has opened the network to eleven private operators, including RC South Africa, TLD Marine, MENAR and Grindrod.

Transnet has moved to set up a leasing company to put rolling stock into private hands, Stanlib is backing Traxtion, Transnet has secured a three hundred million euro loan from the AFD to decarbonise freight, and the UAE-based African Rail is raising one hundred and seventy million dollars to run freight on the network. Insiders are already calling it a new road and rail era.

The commercial implications for anyone selling into South African logistics technology, retail supply chains, or freight-adjacent fintech are non-trivial. The addressable market is not what it was eighteen months ago, and pricing and partnership models built on the old assumption that SA rail was a dead end are now outdated.

The rest of the continent is not waiting

South Africa’s rebuild may be the most visible of all rebuilds, but other countries are busy too. Tanzania is building out the rail and port corridors that Forbes Africa has described as powering East Africa’s future.

The Lobito corridor is moving, with the Africa Finance Corporation raising for the Zambian leg and the United States backing the Angolan end. DP World is expanding the Port of Maputo. APM Terminals is putting six hundred million dollars into Nigeria’s Apapa Port, Nigeria has agreed to a national shipping line with DP World and AD Ports, and Cameroon is bringing a cross-border digital freight platform online.

All these rail networks are being upgraded on overlapping timelines. It is truly an exciting time for existing and would-be role players in this space.

External connectivity is being rewired

Trade is shaping up with the rest of the world too. DP World is opening a Brazil to Africa corridor. A Kazakhstan and Kenya link is being laid as an Asia to Africa logistics route.

CMA CGM has partnered in Kenya, alongside Macron’s eight hundred million dollar Kenya deal, and has moved its regional office to Abidjan. Etihad is adding six new African destinations. South Africa and Italy have signed an agricultural pact aimed at African expansion and access to the EU market.

We see Brazil, EU, Gulf and Central Asia connections being built at the same time as the internal ones. That matters, because external connectivity determines whether a corridor is a domestic convenience or a genuine gateway.

Two questions for your GTM

If we put the three fronts together, two questions are worth asking:

• Does your Africa expansion thesis still treat the continent as a set of country markets, or is it now organised around corridors? The corridor view is the one that the infrastructure is being built around.
• Are your logistics and payments plays aware of each other? If the trade rail and the payments rail are being rebuilt in parallel, a vendor with a credible presence in both is stronger, even through partnerships, than a vendor with a presence in one. Remember, the buyer moving goods along a new corridor is the same buyer who is trying to settle the payment for them.

The bottom line: the third rail

Payments and trade are the two rails everyone can see. They are physical, they are funded, and they are in the headlines. But they raise a question about who is actually allowed to move value and goods along them.

That is the work of the third rail, the identity and data rail, and it is the one that determines who gets to take part in the payments and trade rails.

An interoperable payments rail and a re-laid trade rail are vitally important, but the identity layer is what decides who gets to use them. That is the subject of the final piece in this series.

Coming up next: the identity rail, and why it is the layer that governs access to everything the payments and trade rebuilds are putting in place.