The New Rules of RTM in Africa
by Aftab Sheikh
October 01, 2026 | 04 min read
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If you want to understand the market better, hear it from the people running it.
Not long ago, we went to the ground and asked 58 CPG leaders across Africa:
What is the biggest challenge you face in retail execution and distribution?
“Discipline.”
“Availability.”
“Smuggling.”
These responses came from directors, sales heads, country managers and founders across beverage, food, personal care and pharma companies and distributors operating across Africa.
For global brands looking at Africa, these are the realities that determine what gets sold, where it gets sold, and whether it reaches the right outlet at the right time.
Bizom has spent years working with enterprises across Africa to solve these challenges on the ground. The scale of that work is reflected in individual deployments too, with one Nigerian operation spanning more than 1,400 distributors, 600 van sales reps, and 200,000 outlets.
But before we show what execution at that scale looks like, it is worth starting with the diagnosis.
Here are the four truths their responses revealed.
Truth 1: Two in three problems are inside your own four walls
Only 9 of 53 leaders put price and informal trade first. Another 9 named cost. The other 35 pointed at things a brand controls. The market is hard, and it is also being made harder from the inside.
The concentration is sharp. Reach and data together make up 42% of replies, adding price takes that to 58%, and four themes (Reach, Data, Price, Cost) cover three quarters of everything we heard.
Note: bars are each theme’s share, the line is the running total.
In their words,
“Lack of clarity on the execution standards, and insights to drive turnaround.”
– Member of the Management Board
“Our biggest challenge is turning commercial strategy into differentiated, data-driven execution at outlet level.”
– Omni-Channel Manager
Truth 2: You cannot sell where you cannot reach
Reach and coverage was the number one answer, with 13 of 53 leaders. One in four. Most were not asking for more outlets. They were asking to find the right ones. Seven of the 13 were about distribution itself: depth, range, numeric distribution and coverage. The rest were about finding the right stores, unmarked distributor territories and hard to reach markets.
That is a visibility problem as much as a distribution problem.
“Finding the right stores.”
– Managing Director
“Getting brands stocked in stores that understand who their customers are.”
– Head of Retail
“Absence of geographical boundaries for distributors.”
– Regional Sales Manager
“Depth.”
– Business Unit Head
Truth 3: Informal trade sets the price, and delivery still costs money
Price, competition and informal trade drew 9 replies. Cost drew another 9. Together they are a third of the answers. Much of the cost side was about the system itself: how orders are consolidated, how long a route takes and how many hands a product passes through.
“Competing against informal traders who often do not comply with regulatory measures which reduces their cost of product and allows them to undercut formal traders.”
– Managing Executive
“Creating margin velocity in the value chain while staying within the price elasticity.”
– Route-to-Consumer Manager
“Consolidating orders to fit the required MOQ.”
– National Sales Manager
Truth 4: The last mile is people, and people follow what you measure
Six leaders (11%) named the field force itself. Reward visits and you get visits. Reward the right product, in the right outlet, at the right time, and you begin to get execution. Reps need to know what good looks like before they enter the shop, not after.
“Linking incentives to execution with the risk of gaming the systems.”
– Commercial Transformation Manager
“Discipline.”
– Regional Director
“Productivity.”
– Regional Manager
Note: Every square is one leader, coloured by the challenge they named. The last six squares are the field force.
Where the Route-to-Market breaks
Every reply describes a failure at a different point on the route between a brand and a shopper: finding the outlet, knowing it, serving it or winning the sale in it. Nearly six in ten answers (31 of 53) sit in the last two stages, where a product has to arrive and then actually sell.
Proven on the ground in Africa
A leading Nigerian FMCG distributor has been running its sales force and distributor network on Bizom for more than five years. Since August 2022, its distributor network has grown 5x, from 293 to 1,468 distributors, while its van sales force has more than doubled, from 281 to 604 reps, reaching 200,000 outlets across Nigeria.
Note: Distributors on the platform and van sales reps, August 2022 to June 2026. Source: Bizom customer case study.
The growth has been supported by a more structured operating model across distributor management, sales-force execution, outlet coverage, availability, promotions and van sales planning.
The same platform answers the truths this survey surfaced:
- Reach: A van fleet 47% larger than in 2022 now covers 200,000 outlets.
- Data and Availability: Fill Rate and Total Out of Stock tracking compare what was ordered against what was delivered at outlet level, so distributor claims rest on verified delivery and stockouts are visible before they cost sales.
- Price and Promotions: The distributor became one of the first organisations in Nigeria to run secondary promotions with outlet-level tracking of scheme use and sales impact.
- People: Load-Out Norms replaced van loading by salesman intuition with system recommendations based on historical sales, doubling van stock allocation per distributor.
Trusted by consumer goods enterprises across Africa
The leaders we spoke to made one thing clear: better execution starts with a clearer view of the market.
Bizom works with enterprises across beverages, food & agri, household & personal care, and paints, as well as large distributors and bottlers.
Across these engagements, we help enterprises manage route-to-market execution, distributor networks, field sales, outlet coverage, availability and promotions. Globally, 750+ brands across 35+ countries run their route to market on Bizom.
If Africa is part of your growth plans or you’re looking to strengthen your existing RTM, Click here.
