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Africa Thematic 10 November 2026

One million vehicles a year - the combustion wave remaking Africa's roads

Jeremy Stevens

  • China has become the default supplier of Africa's motorisation, of which speed and extent is the story. Vehicle exports to Africa reached USD24bn in 2025 – and may hit USD36bn in 2026 (USD8.2bn in 2021). China's share of Africa's vehicle imports rose from 14% in 2016 to over 35% in 2026. Notably, over half of that was in the last two years.
  • The flow is not just cars. China exports the entire spectrum of wheeled transport. USD5.7bn of passenger cars, USD4.1bn of trucks, USD3.4bn of motorcycles, USD2.5bn of tractors, and USD5.1bn of parts. China supplies the hardware of African mobility and production. What were once separate industries, each with its own incumbents, now face the same Chinese cost curve at every price point.
  • Every Chinese producer faces the same choice: fight with everything it has for a place in the domestic NEV race – or take its combustion capacity abroad. With the home market having moved on from ICE, there is no third option: combustion factories either export to preserve the value of existing production assets – or die. The domestic economic structure generates a surplus, and the price lands it competitively in Africa.
  • The affordability revolution is expansion as much as displacement.
  • Notably, Africa is a price market, and price markets are where low-cost exporters thrive and domestic assemblers struggle. Cheap vehicles and viable assembly pull in opposite directions. The policy task is to purchase industrial capability without surrendering the affordability gain.
  • Assembly is real, but an order of magnitude smaller than the flow. Roughly USD500m of investment a year, against more than USD24bn of exports; and, just five countries take nearly 80% of the capital.
  • The relationship remains predominantly supply-led but already includes meaningful production and service activities. The industrial question is whether that activity deepens into local sourcing, technical capability and decision-making — not whether Africa moves from none to some.
  • China's exports window to Africa is finite. Chinese suppliers' importance will persist, but exceptional discounts and growth rates may not. The opportunity to negotiate capabilities will differ by market and project.
  • The used-car wave comes next, and it favours West and North Africa: a 350-million-vehicle Chinese fleet is beginning to export second-hand, and left-hand drive rules out the southern and eastern markets.
  • The risk which is graver than import dependence, is permanent intermediation: assembling, importing and distributing other people's machines, while the engineering, the standards and the margins accumulate elsewhere. The remedy is not to bemoan the flow – but to discipline it.
 

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