When Hiruy Mulugeta traveled by road from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in late 2025, he was not simply taking a business trip. He was setting out to solve a problem that has challenged African enterprises for decades: how to turn the promise of continental free trade into an operational reality for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The overland journey along the Ethiopia–Kenya corridor and through the Moyale border crossing exposed him to the friction rarely captured in high-level policy discussions—logistics bottlenecks, fragmented trade data, complex regulatory regimes, verification gaps, and the steep learning curve small businesses face when trying to access foreign markets.
That experience laid the groundwork for AfriConnect, an Ethiopian trade-tech startup launched on July 27 to serve as a digital trade execution and intelligence platform across Africa.
Africa represents a massive collective market, yet intra-continental trade remains notoriously difficult to navigate. For Mulugeta, the goal is not to build another basic listing directory, but to develop the operational infrastructure required to operationalize the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
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