My mum owns a primary and secondary school somewhere in Akeja, Ogun Sate. There is this man, Papilo, a supplier who handles FMCG products in that area. He comes Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Sundays are for my mum and other school owners stocking up for students during break. He is not the only one. They are everywhere like that. One thing I know is that most of these sellers don’t pay him immediately, They pay on the next supply day or after a week. Sometimes it stretches to 3 supplies before payment clears. I've watched him argue back and forth with customers who say no money yet. He still gives them all or little. I've seen this for over 15 years growing up. This is the practice across every informal market in Nigeria. This is Africa’s informal supply chain. Papilo knows all his customers. He knows their children’s names. He argues, negotiates, and finds a middle ground. No App or AI can replicate this. Papilo now runs plenty of small kekes distributed all over Akeja and beyond. In African businesses, relationships aren’t just nice-to-haves. They are part of the infrastructure. And this is where the majority of our builders get it wrong. A techie once went to get bread at a store and stumbles on a sole distributor supplying them wines. He thinks “so this is how these get their stocks” he goes home to google the numbers and sees millions of retailers, no central database, orders on phone call, cash payments, manual records. He sees the classic Manufacturer → Distributor → Wholesaler → Retailer chain and he goes “yes! This is a gap. This is untapped. I can build this on an app”. Actually, he is right. But here is what he missed; The supplier extends credit The wholesaler knows who always pays at each time. The sales rep knows whose child just got admitted into university. The delivery driver knows which shop opens late or earlier None of this can fit in an app database because they are the everyday circumstantial reality of Nigerian business owners. Your app can’t document this. A retailer doesn’t always buy from who is cheaper. She buys from who’s delivered consistently for years. The one who lets her pay next week. The one who picks up the phone immediately there is a problem. See your app can calculate credit just fine. But the distributor knows Mama Olomi missed payment because her shop flooded last week. That context is the business in this part of the world. You will think funding fixes this but marketForce had $42M and still died. Sendy had $27M, Medsaf had $7M. Your investors will push you to the usual playbook; free delivery, discounts, cashback, promotions, etc and growth will look incredible at first but the moment the subsidies disappear, you will start to compete with relationships using economics alone. Then you’d realize your capital didn't buy survival, it brought speed to a broken model. Somebody say Reality! Now let’s look at the ones who didn’t die. They simply mutated. Sabi moved into traceability/export infra. OmniRetail leaned into embedded finance. Sendy’s co-founder built TABB on trade credit data. Rather than say we’re replacing distributors, they became the operating system behind the distributors helping them; 📍 Manage inventory 📍 Collect payment 📍 Access financing 📍 Discover retailers 📍 Forecast demand 📍 Coordinate logistics This is the lesson for anyone building in African informal market. Don’t ask How do i remove the middleman Ask, what valuable job is the middleman doing that technology can make easier? Don’t compete with the market woman, equip her. Build the layer she can’t build herself (credit history, verified supply chains, payment infrastructure, etc). This is because Africa’s distribution problem was never about apps vs humans. It’s about who controls the trust layer. Build that, not the marketplace. @blocstreets