Univar Logistics | Supply Chain Intelligence for East Africa
Everyone talks about port congestion. Everyone talks about customs delays. But the conversation rarely lands where the real cost lives — the last mile.
The last mile is the final leg of a shipment’s journey: from a distribution hub or warehouse to the customer’s door, shop floor, or project site. It sounds straightforward. In East Africa, it is anything but. And for businesses that move physical goods — whether imported consumer products, construction materials, pharmaceutical supplies, or agricultural inputs — failing to understand the last-mile problem means bleeding money at the end of every delivery chain, every single time.
Here is a look at why last-mile delivery is East Africa’s most underestimated logistics challenge, what the numbers actually say, and what can be done about it.
The Africa last-mile delivery market was valued at approximately USD 5.15 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 8.93 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.2%. That growth figure reflects both the scale of the opportunity and the depth of the unmet need — a rapidly expanding market still struggling with the fundamentals of getting goods to the right place, at the right time, at a sustainable cost.
The underlying driver is e-commerce and urbanisation. African consumers, like consumers elsewhere, have shifted their expectations. Where five or six days was once accepted as a standard e-commerce delivery window across the continent, that tolerance is shrinking. Customers in Nairobi, Kampala, and Dar es Salaam increasingly expect delivery within 24–48 hours. The infrastructure serving them was not built for that expectation.
The broader cost picture is stark. Logistics costs across Africa run at three to four times the global average, according to data cited by industry analysts. This gap does not sit in the ocean freight or air cargo leg — it accumulates in the final stretch. In Kenya specifically, last-mile delivery costs can consume 35 to 55 percent of total transportation costs for a given shipment. In markets with mature logistics infrastructure, that figure typically sits between 20 and 30 percent. The premium East African businesses pay to bridge that gap is a structural tax on commerce.
Kenya’s national highway network serves its main corridors reasonably well. The A104, A2, and Thika Superhighway handle the primary trunk routes. But the last mile rarely runs on a national highway. It runs on county roads, unmarked tracks, and peri-urban routes that have not kept pace with population growth or freight demand.
Rural roads in particular are unpaved and become unreliable during rainy seasons, directly increasing vehicle wear, fuel consumption, and delivery failure rates. A delivery route that takes 45 minutes in dry season can become a half-day exercise in February. Maintenance costs on delivery vehicles operating these routes are substantially higher than urban counterparts — a cost that ultimately gets absorbed into delivery pricing or margin erosion.
Nairobi is one of the most traffic-congested cities on the continent. For a city of its size and economic significance, the road-to-vehicle ratio is severely inadequate. Deliveries that should take 30 minutes within the CBD can take three hours during peak periods.
This has a direct operational consequence: the number of stops a delivery driver can make in a day falls dramatically. In efficient urban logistics environments, drivers complete 15–25 drops per day. In Nairobi’s congestion reality, that figure can halve. The same vehicle, the same driver, the same fuel cost — delivering half the volume. Unit delivery economics deteriorate rapidly under those conditions.
This is East Africa’s invisible last-mile crisis. A significant proportion of addresses in Kenyan cities and towns are informal or ambiguous. Directions to delivery locations frequently involve landmarks: “turn left at the red gate,” “third plot after the Total station,” or “near the school.” GPS coordinates are not consistently used, and formal postal addresses are absent for large swaths of the urban and peri-urban population.
For a logistics operation trying to route 200 deliveries a day with a degree of algorithmic precision, this is crippling. Drivers spend meaningful time confirming locations by phone, making unnecessary detours, and occasionally failing to complete delivery at all. Failed first-attempt deliveries are a compounding cost — the vehicle, fuel, and driver time are already consumed, and a second attempt has to be scheduled.
The problem is amplified outside Nairobi. Kenya’s population is still predominantly non-urban. Reaching customers in towns like Kisii, Isiolo, Embu, or Homa Bay involves long travel distances, sparse delivery infrastructure, and very low delivery density — meaning fewer drops per kilometre of road travelled.
For industries like agri-input supply, pharmaceutical distribution, or construction materials supply, where the customer base is genuinely rural, last-mile delivery is not a convenience challenge. It is an access challenge that determines whether a business model is commercially viable at all.
A substantial portion of East African consumers still transact in cash, which introduces the cash-on-delivery (COD) model into the last-mile equation. COD creates operational complexity: drivers carry cash, which is a security risk; failed deliveries mean items return to the warehouse without generating revenue; and reconciliation processes slow down the entire delivery cycle.
The shift to mobile money — particularly M-Pesa in Kenya — has partially addressed this. But the transition is uneven across age groups, product categories, and geographies, and the operational implications of managing a mixed-payment delivery fleet remain a real logistics overhead.
Metric Figure Source Africa last-mile market size (2024) USD 5.15 billion Business Market Insights Projected market size (2031) USD 8.93 billion Business Market Insights Last-mile as % of total logistics cost in Kenya 35–55% Senga / Industry analysis Africa logistics costs vs global average 3–4x higher LISNR / Industry analysis Average e-commerce delivery wait, Africa 5–6 days FarEye Regional Report, 2024 Food price increase due to transport costs, Sub-Saharan Africa Up to 50% World Bank Food losses attributed to poor logistics ~40% World Bank E-commerce CAGR in Africa last-mile segment 8.2% (2025–2031) Business Market Insights
The last-mile gap has attracted a wave of startups and logistics innovators across East Africa. Several approaches have shown real-world traction:
Agent Networks and Collection Points Rather than attempting door-to-door delivery in high-density or hard-to-reach areas, several operators have built networks of collection agents — small shopkeepers, pharmacies, or kiosks that act as delivery endpoints. The customer collects from a nearby point rather than waiting for home delivery. This reduces failed delivery rates and cuts route complexity dramatically.
Motorbike and Three-Wheeler Fleets For urban density, the boda-boda (motorbike courier) model remains highly effective. Motorbikes navigate congestion that stops a van cold. Several logistics platforms have formalised this by building managed boda-boda fleets with GPS tracking, delivery apps, and standardised insurance coverage — bringing informal capacity into a structured last-mile operation.
Route Optimisation Technology Software tools that account for real-time traffic, GPS coordinates (where available), and historical delivery data are being adopted by larger players. Route optimisation can reduce fuel costs by 10–20% and meaningfully increase daily drop rates. Adoption is still limited to larger operators with the capital to invest in technology.
Crowdsourced Delivery Logistics companies are extending the crowdsourcing model — using pre-qualified private drivers to pick up pending deliveries as their routes align — to address peak-period capacity shortfalls. This flexes the fleet without carrying fixed costs.
If you are an importer, distributor, manufacturer, or retailer operating in East Africa, the last-mile challenge affects your landed cost, your customer experience, and your competitive positioning. Here is the practical translation:
Last-mile delivery in East Africa will not be fixed by a single intervention. It will be improved, incrementally, by a combination of infrastructure investment, technology adoption, and operational creativity. The businesses that treat last-mile logistics as a strategic function — not just a cost to be minimised — will hold an advantage as the region’s commerce continues to grow.
At Univar Logistics Limited, we work with importers, distributors, and supply chain managers to design freight solutions that account for the full delivery chain — not just the port gate. If you are navigating distribution challenges in Kenya or the broader East African corridor, we would welcome the conversation.
Sources: Business Market Insights (2024), LISNR Connectivity Trends Report, FarEye Regional Delivery Report 2024, World Bank Sub-Saharan Africa logistics analysis, Senga Logistics (Kenya last-mile cost estimates), DHL Kenya logistics advisory. This article is for informational purposes and reflects available industry data as of mid-2025.