ANALYSIS | When “Made in Africa” becomes a balance-sheet reality
By Vanessa de Villiers and Veronica Lukwago Africa’s manufacturing potential will only translate into sustainable industrial growth when ambition becomes commercially viable, operationally executable and financially bankable.
Africa’s manufacturing value added has climbed steadily, reaching an estimated USD 351 billion in 2025, up from USD 285 billion in 2020, according to the African Development Bank’s 2025 Africa Industrialisation Index.
Yet the continent still accounts for less than 2% of global manufacturing output and only 1.4% of manufactured exports.
In the same index, South Africa slipped from the top of Africa’s industrialisation ranking for the first time since 2010.
Those numbers describe a familiar tension.
The ambition is real, and the potential is real, but the translation into competitive, bankable industrial output is where Africa keeps falling short.
The manufacturing conversation, then, must move beyond whether the continent can build factories to whether African-made products can compete, on cost, quality, delivery and resilience, at home, across the region and globally.
That shift is not a policy problem waiting for another strategy.
Africa has no shortage of industrial master plans, natural resources or market potential: a young workforce, expanding consumer markets and, in the African Continental Free Trade Area, one of the largest single markets in the world.
What determines whether that potential becomes sustainable growth is more practical: whether ambition can be made operationally executable and financially bankable.
Three shifts will decide it.
The first gap is execution.
Turning industrial strategy into functioning industrial ecosystems depends on the enablers that sit beneath every factory: reliable energy and water, efficient logistics, predictable regulation and approvals, and consistent implementation.
When these work together, manufacturers can plan with confidence, price competitively and build scale beyond their domestic markets.
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