Who Are You Really Trading With? The Trust Gap Behind Africas Export Boom
Kenya’s trade numbers tell a good story. In the quarter of 2026 Africa absorbed 41.7 percent of Kenya’s merchandise export earnings up from 36.9 percent a year earlier and the second-highest share in nearly a decade. Exports to the continent grew twice as fast as overall exports. Uganda alone accounted for nearly half of that growth and Kenya’s trade surplus with Africa widened to a record high. Regional trade, long treated as the understudy to markets in Europe and Asia is quietly becoming the backbone of Kenya’s export economy.
It is a shift and one the African Continental Free Trade Area was designed to accelerate. But every trade statistic like this one sits on top of a less visible number: “how many of those cross-border transactions were entered into on the strength of a good relationship, a referral or a signed purchase order rather than on verified knowledge of who the counterparty actually is?” That question rarely makes headlines while it should.
The part of diligence most businesses skip
When a Kenyan manufacturer starts shipping to a new distributor in Kampala, Kinshasa or Kigali or when a supplier in Lagos looks to extend credit to a buyer in Nairobi the commercial conversation usually moves faster than the verification one. Terms get agreed; goods move invoices are subsequently raised. Only later if a payment is late or a shipment is disputed do the harder questions surface. Who actually owns this company? Is the person signing the contract authorized to bind it? Does this business have a history of disputes, unpaid liabilities or undisclosed related-party risk? Is it even still active?
This is not a Kenyan or African problem. It is the default condition of cross-border trade everywhere: the further a transaction travels from home the thinner the information trail becomes. What changes from market to market is simply how exposed a business is when that trail runs out and in markets where audited financials, public registries and credit histories are patchy or inconsistent the exposure is higher and the consequences more expensive.
Gartner’s research done in 2019, on third-party risk makes the point starkly: the majority of risks tied to a business partner are typically discovered after onboarding and due diligence are already complete. By the time the warning signs appear the relationship and often the capital is already committed.
Why this matters more as trade regionalizes
As Kenyan exporters lean further into markets and as businesses across the continent trade more with each other under African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) the counterparties on the other side of these deals are increasingly companies without a long visible track record in the buyer’s geographical location. That is precisely the trade Africa needs more of. It is also the trade where identity verification, ownership transparency and credit assessment matter most because the informal safety nets, the shared bank, the mutual contact, the years of prior dealings are often not there yet.
The same logic holds beyond Africa. Any business extending credit signing a supply contract or opening a trading relationship with a counterparty across a border is making a judgement call about an entity, its directors, its financial standing and its ability to honour obligations often with only a company name and a certificate of incorporation to go on. Getting that judgement wrong is rarely dramatic. It shows up quietly as debt, disputed shipments or relationships that should never have been signed.
Bridging the gap with business intelligence
This is the gap that structured business information exists to close. At Creditinfo, our Business Information Solution gives businesses, banks and institutions access to company data such as registration and identification details, directors and beneficial ownership, financial statements and ratios group structures and credit scores and limits covering companies across more than 200 markets, built from thousands of proprietary and partner sources. Where records are thin our manual investigation service adds a layer of verified on-the-ground insight.
The value is not in adding paperwork to a deal. It is in answering, before a contract is signed than after it is disputed, the basic questions every cross-border relationship depends on: is this counterparty who it claims to be, is it able to meet its obligations and who stands behind it?
Kenya’s exporters and businesses trading across borders have every reason to keep chasing markets beyond their own. The businesses that will benefit most from that growth are the ones that pair ambition with the discipline to know, with confidence, exactly who they are doing business with.
– Michael Nyaga, CEO of Creditinfo Kenya
