How Value Chain Gaps Limit Fashion Scalability in Africa
FEATURED BLOG
How Value Chain Gaps Limit Fashion Scalability in Africa
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Oct 2025
Aisha (not her real name), a creative designer in Lagos, has been crafting clothes for more than seven years. Popular with young people, her bespoke clothes have garnered international fame, selling out during the festive season and attracting clients globally. Yet, despite this high demand and success, she can't move beyond niche, custom orders. While she sees her business thrive during the Christmas season, scaling her business to the high-volume world of ready-to-wear and which could reach a wider audience year-round has proved futile.
For Aisha, the challenge has not been marketing—her designs already command international attention. While finance is a key consideration, Aisha insists the bigger barrier is the supply chain. She is forced to buy fabrics abroad, battle shipping delays, and rely on an informal network of small tailors to keep up with production demands. The logical step of hiring a proper production team or using a factory is blocked by fundamental infrastructure failures: unreliable power means she now also has to secure an expensive generator to enable efficient production, unreliable logistics mean she now has to accommodate timeline delays, and lack of large-scale garment manufacturing means quality control is a critical gap.
Aisha's story is not unique; it is the standard reality for creative business owners across Africa. The situation is deeply counterintuitive: African countries grow roughly 6% of the world’s cotton, but 90% of it is immediately shipped out, mainly to Asia. The result? Africa has to import finished cotton fabrics and yarn. Sub-Saharan Africa contributes less than 2% of global spinning, weaving, and knitting output, and local apparel producers source only 7% of cotton yarn and 6% of cotton fabric from elsewhere on the continent. This forces designers like Aisha to depend on expensive imports, increasing their costs, extending their timelines, and limiting their growth.
Large-scale garment manufacturing across Africa is concentrated in only a few countries, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Lesotho, leaving most designers with very limited options. Outside these hubs, they must either rely on small local tailors, which sacrifices standardization, or limit production to maintain quality. For designers like Aisha, making the leap from bespoke pieces to a commercially viable ready-to-wear line is nearly impossible without access to proper manufacturing facilities.
High energy costs, inefficient logistics, and limited water access further exacerbate these constraints. Energy in Africa is roughly three times more expensive than in Asia, while logistics inefficiencies increase production costs by 15–30%. Sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita electricity consumption stands at just 181 kWh, compared to 13,000 kWh in the U.S. and 6,500 kWh in Europe, forcing firms to rely on costly generators. These structural inefficiencies erode labor cost advantages and reduce competitiveness, making scaling operations prohibitively expensive for designers in the continent.
Regional value chains could mitigate some of these challenges but they remain underdeveloped. Two of the continent’s top four cotton-producing countries neighbor Lagos, one of Africa’s major design and fashion hubs, yet the linkages between these producers and local manufacturers are weak. Conversely, some of Africa’s most sophisticated garment manufacturing hubs lie in East and Southern Africa, but connecting designers in West African fashion hubs to these centers is difficult due to infrastructural gaps, inefficient logistics, and high costs. As a result, designers cannot reliably leverage regional networks for either sourcing or production.
This fragmentation is compounded by the limited regional integration of the continent’s textile trade. Intra-African trade in textiles and apparel remains below 12%, hampered by non-tariff barriers, uneven standards, and logistical bottlenecks. Designers are often forced to either compromise on quality or restrict production to domestic markets—a dynamic that contributes to higher retail prices in Africa compared with global markets, reducing both profitability for designers and affordability for consumers.
Addressing these challenges requires creative hubs and strategic value chain interventions that connect designers with key players across the textile and apparel ecosystem, even as policymakers work to tackle longstanding infrastructural barriers. By linking designers to production support, vetted suppliers, training, and logistics networks, such hubs can reduce reliance on imports, improve standardization, and enable scalable operations. While there are ongoing initiatives such as the Ananse Centre for Design in Lagos, looking to address these challenges, such initiatives need to be scaled. Scaling these models continent-wide would allow designers like Aisha to tap into local and intra-African demand, lower costs, and enter ready-to-wear markets sustainably.
This is particularly vital as the potential of Africa’s cotton apparel sector is enormous. By 2026, the continent could export €5.8 billion of cotton garments, with almost 15% remaining within Africa, yet two-thirds of intra-regional export potential remains untapped. At the same time, import demand is projected to rise from €3.6 billion to €6.6 billion. Fully realizing this potential could benefit 26 economies, including 16 least-developed countries, generating over 250,000 jobs across the continent, with more than 70% for women. Strengthening regional value chains and supporting African design businesses would not only create employment but also enable creatives to move beyond bespoke markets, bringing locally inspired designs to regional and global consumers, unlocking both economic opportunity and Africa’s creative potential on the world stage.