Where's the Data on African Firms?

Coverage of success in entrepreneurship has been enabled by the Internet to a very great extent. And yet very few businesses based in Africa have much prominence outside the continent. This may be because a disproportionate number of Africans are engaged in subsistence farming and the main exports from the continent are agricultural and extractive commodities. While there is demand for coffee, tea and other African exports, the main marketing firms are not based in the continent. The ostensible reason is that the commodities are backed with services that add value for which Africans have no developed a sufficient degree of competence and networks for retail distribution.

An article in the Economist magazine shows the rare African firm that has made inroads into the British supermarket chains in order to distribute a coffee brand that is entirely grown and distributed by a Ugandan entrepreneur. As expected of every entrepreneurial tale, Good Africa's penetration into the supermarket chains in Britain required deft manoeuvres. What these small number of entrepreneurs lack is the business linkages that would ease the information extraction process and improve their ability to supply a reasonable quality product. In other words, trust in business is one of the areas that hampers African exporters. I wonder whether a business mechanism for extracting that information is possible. There must be some way.