Trade doesn't flow on roads − it flows on data

Peter Walsh, MD of CommsCloud.

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By 2035, Africa will either have dismantled the trade constraints that hold it back, or entrenched them permanently through inaction.

The next decade won't be shaped by grand policy statements or ambitious trade agreements. It'll be determined by whether Africa fixes the quiet infrastructure failures that are currently strangling cross-border trade.

We have the youngest population on earth, enormous natural resources, and a continental free-trade agreement covering 1.3 billion people. Yet moving goods across Africa remains slower, riskier and more expensive than it should be. Not because we lack ambition, but because the systems moving our goods, data and decisions were never built to work across borders at scale.

By 2035, Africa could become the world's most compelling example of how connected infrastructure reshapes trade. We won’t achieve this by copying Europe or Asia, but by building something uniquely African − resilient, collaborative and designed for our reality.

The question is how deeply the internet of thing (IOT) will be woven into the movement of goods, energy, people and data. Also, will we deliberately design that infrastructure, or just inherit whatever gets built by default?

Africa's trade bottlenecks are usually described as physical problems: congested ports, deteriorating roads, endless border queues. These issues are visible and politically tangible, making them easier to discuss.

However, the real damage sits beneath the surface.

For decades, Africa's IOT and trade connectivity have rested on three assumptions that have quietly collapsed:

• That permanent roaming is acceptable as long-term infrastructure.
• That single-core networks can support continental trade.
• That regulatory complexity can be postponed indefinitely.

These weren't neutral technical choices. They pushed cost and risk onto businesses operating across borders, while letting infrastructure providers avoid accountability when things failed.

Every time a truck loses visibility at Beitbridge. Every time cold-chain data vanishes between countries. Every time security systems go dark at borders. The impact lands on operators, not on the systems that failed them.

This failure persists because everyone can point somewhere else. Telcos blame regulation. Regulators blame technology. Enterprises blame "African complexity". The result? Systemic stagnation disguised as progress.

For years, roaming SIMs and centralised networks were treated as necessary compromises for African IOT. They enabled early deployments, but they were never designed to scale across a continent with fragmented regulation, patchy infrastructure and constant cross-border movement.

That era is ending not because the industry evolved gracefully, but because it's run out of excuses.

Africa could become the world's most compelling example of how connected infrastructure reshapes trade.

A 2025 Kaleido Intelligence survey for floLIVE found that only 2% of IOT operators still believe global roaming SIMs work for large-scale deployments. The majority now point to multi-IMSI and eSIM architectures that adapt connectivity to where a device operates, not where a contract was signed.

This isn't optional anymore.

In the same survey, 59% of providers ranked regulatory compliance among their top three challenges − ahead of cost, security and platform complexity.

Governments are tightening controls on permanent roaming, data sovereignty and local processing to fix an architectural shortcut that should never have become standard practice. By 2035, trade systems still running on permanent roaming will be invisible.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) promises market access, but access doesn't move goods.

Trade moves when goods move predictably and predictability depends on data that doesn't break at borders.

IOT could become the digital freight network behind African trade. A single cross-border truck generates tens of thousands of data points per hour: location, temperature, video feeds, engine diagnostics, driver behaviour. When that data flows seamlessly across borders, trade fundamentally changes.

Border delays shrink as digital pre-clearance becomes viable. Cargo visibility stays intact from the factory to the port. AI predicts congestion along corridors like Durban-Lusaka and reroutes dynamically. Insurers price risk on actual behaviour, not assumptions.

Without resilient connectivity, none of this scales. AfCFTA becomes just another paper agreement layered onto fragile infrastructure.

The same applies beyond logistics.

In agriculture, IOT transforms fragmented national supply chains into regional value chains, connecting yield optimisation, livestock tracking, cold-chain monitoring and export compliance.

In utilities, grid balancing, water distribution and pipeline monitoring become regional systems rather than national silos, because data − not politics − determines optimal flow.

In security, low-latency connectivity and shared intelligence shift systems from reactive to predictive, enabling cross-border cooperation rather than isolated responses.

Africa's challenges won't be solved by more fences or more paperwork. They'll be solved by systems that stay connected when it matters most.

A 2025 Transforma Insights position paper clearly highlights regulatory trends: localisation requirements, data sovereignty rules, device standardisation mandates, and national AI frameworks are accelerating, not retreating.

This is pushing Africa toward:

• Regional IOT policy alignment within SADC, COMESA and ECOWAS.
• Harmonised device onboarding and certification standards.
• Cross-border identity frameworks for IOT devices.
• Clear rules governing where data is processed and stored.
• Shared security and compliance frameworks between neighbouring states.

By 2035, compliance will determine who gets to participate in continental trade and who gets locked out.

Unlike Europe, we're not weighed down by decades of legacy infrastructure. That gives us a genuine advantage.

IOT data pricing is falling rapidly. Connectivity providers are moving toward distributed packet gateways and multi-core networks. AI is becoming central to optimisation, anomaly detection and compliance enforcement.

Africa can build a continent-scale, cloud-native IOT architecture that's resilient, programmable and compliant from day one, not as a retrofit, but as a foundation.

The West will eventually follow this path. We can lead it.

Africa faces a clear choice right now. We can keep layering trade agreements, logistics platforms and AI tools on top of fragile, fragmented digital infrastructure, or we can redesign the foundation itself.

One path preserves the status quo: duplicated systems, isolated corridors and trade that still breaks digitally at borders.

The other requires collaboration that's harder, slower and politically uncomfortable − but delivers infrastructure that actually works at a continental scale.

There's no third option. Incremental fixes won't survive the next decade of regulatory pressure, exponential data growth and evolving security threats.

Africa's next growth curve won't be built on cheaper labour or bigger ports. It'll be built on collaboration, not as a marketing slogan, but as actual infrastructure.

That means governments coordinating cross-border data movement. Telcos sharing packet-gateway ecosystems. OEMs adopting Pan-African device profiles by default. Digital corridors mirroring physical trade routes. Regulators and industry co-designing frameworks for AI, data sovereignty and permanent roaming restrictions.

Trade doesn't flow on roads. It flows on data.

By 2035, Africa's competitiveness will be determined by whether our digital infrastructure was designed to collaborate across borders, or allowed to fracture along them. Those who choose collaboration will shape Africa's next growth cycle. Those who don't will be bypassed by it.