For decades, African industrialisation strategies have focused on what to produce. Perhaps the more important question is who coordinates production, finance, logistics, market intelligence, and market access across the different scales of the continental economy? Japan found one answer in its sogo shosha (general trading companies). These firms are system integrators, connecting manufacturers, financiers, shipping companies, governments, and foreign buyers into a coherent commercial ecosystem. Their role is also to create complementarity between national, regional, and global value chains, allowing firms of different sizes and capabilities to participate in increasingly sophisticated production and trade networks. Could Africa develop its own version? This paper explores how the sogo shosha model could inspire a new generation of African trading companies capable of strengthening the AfCFTA, accelerating industrialisation, and transforming fragmented markets into an integrated continental trade system. Sometimes the most valuable innovation is not a new product or service. It is a new way of organising trade.

Read the paper on the international journal of Technology, Health and Sustainability.

The evolution of relations between Ethiopia and Djibouti challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in African regional integration: that integration proceeds through a linear sequence of institutional stages designed and managed from above by regional organizations. Classical integration theory imagines a gradual progression from free trade areas to customs unions, common markets, and ultimately political union. Yet the African experience increasingly reveals a different reality. Regional integration advances as governments address concrete operational challenges and respond to growing functional interdependencies, rather than through ideological convergence toward predetermined models of integration. In this perspective, integration is not imposed from above according to a predefined institutional blueprint. Instead, it emerges through adaptive interactions and incremental institutional adjustments driven by practical needs such as developing transport corridors, incresing connectivity, encoraging cross-border economic activity, or securing reliable access to the sea, as illustrated by the Ethiopia–Djibouti case.

Read the full article on Eurasia Review.