Despite the rapid growth of Asian import demand, African firms remain strikingly under-represented in Asian markets: the continent
supplies less than 2 % of Asia’s total merchandise imports and only 5 % of its agro-processing and light-manufacturing needs. This
paper identifies and quantifies the market barriers that suppress Africa-to-Asia trade. Combining a novel transaction-level dataset
covering 2008-2022, firm-level surveys in six African countries, and in-depth interviews with Asian importers, we decompose the gap
between potential and actual exports into four categories of frictions: (1) tariff and non-tariff measures, including opaque SPS rules
and rules-of-origin provisions; (2) trade-finance constraints, driven by the high-risk premiums African banks face in Asian markets; (3)
logistics and connectivity gaps, especially the scarcity of direct liner services and reliable cold-chain infrastructure; and (4)
information asymmetries that limit African firms’ awareness of Asian product standards and buyer preferences. A structural gravity
model that incorporates these barriers shows that eliminating the most binding constraints—particularly SPS compliance costs and
trade-finance spreads—could raise African manufactured exports to Asia by 38 % and agricultural exports by 54 % within five years.

The paper concludes with a sequenced policy agenda that targets the highest-return interventions at both the regional (AfCFTA-
Asian trade facilitation agreements) and national (export-credit guarantee schemes, accredited laboratory networks) levels.