Lagos to Nairobi: a corridor of small manufacturers going regional
Not the unicorns. The boring, profitable, border-hopping mid-market firms.
The Lagos-Nairobi corridor is not a startup story. It is a logistics story — one written by manufacturers who move goods across borders without the headlines.
The mid-market
These are firms with 20 to 200 employees. They make everything from plastics to processed food. They are not venture-backed. They are profitable. And they are going regional.
"The unicorn gets the cover. The mid-market gets the margin."
The border problem
Every border is a tax — not just the official one, but the time, the uncertainty, and the informal payments. The firms that scale are the ones that learn to navigate this without losing their margins.
We documented eight firms that now operate across three or more countries. The common thread: they invested in relationships, not just routes.
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