The £66 Billion Gatekeeper: What Tesco Buys from Africa, and How African Agribusiness Can Win Britain's Biggest Shelf

*An Africa-to-UK trade briefing, October 2026*

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## 1. The giant: Tesco by the numbers

Tesco is the UK's largest supermarket chain by a wide margin, and one of the largest retailers in the world.

**Financial year 2025/26 (to 28 February 2026)**

- **Group sales:** £66.6bn, up 4.3% at constant exchange rates. Revenue rose 3.3%, held back by a 6.5% fall in fuel sales.

- **Adjusted operating profit:** £3,152m, up from £3,128m.

- **Statutory operating profit:** £2,985m, up 10.1% from £2,711m.

- **Profit before tax:** £2,403m, up from £2,215m.

- **2026/27 guidance:** adjusted operating profit of £3.0bn to £3.3bn.

**Scale and footprint**

- **People:** more than 340,000 colleagues.

- **Stores:** 3,724 across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Central Europe.

- **Expansion:** 93 new stores opened in the year, including 65 Express convenience stores in the UK.

- **Wholesale:** Booker, its wholesale arm, made £292m in adjusted operating profit and added 369 net new retail partners. That makes Booker a second route into the UK through convenience stores and catering.

**Growth engines**

- **Online:** UK online sales grew 11.4%. Tesco's online market share rose to 36.9%.

- **Rapid delivery:** Tesco Whoosh sales jumped 51% to over £400m.

- **Premium range:** Finest grew sales by more than 15%, with over 750 new or improved Finest products.

- **New products:** more than 2,000 new and improved food lines were launched.

- **Clothing:** F&F sales passed £1.2bn, up 5.1%.

- **Health:** 65% of UK and ROI food sales are now classed as healthy. That is a tailwind for fresh-produce exporters.

## 2. Market share: dominant, but under pressure

Across the full financial year, Tesco held about 28.5% of the UK grocery market. In December 2025 it reached its highest share in over a decade.

The latest figures show some softening. In the 12 weeks to 4 October 2026, Tesco's sales grew 1.0%, but its share slipped for the fifth report in a row.

**UK grocery market share, 12 weeks to 4 October 2026 (same period 2025 in brackets)**

1. Tesco: 27.8% (27.9%)

2. Sainsbury's: 15.2% (15.3%)

3. Asda: 11.5% (11.8%)

4. Aldi: 10.5% (10.6%)

5. Lidl: 8.6% (8.2%), with sales up 7.1%

The structural story is the rise of the discounters. The Big Four's combined share has fallen from around 73% in 2017 to about 65% in 2026, and almost all of that loss went to Aldi and Lidl.

Even so, Tesco still sells nearly twice as much grocery as its nearest rival. Roughly £1 in every £3.60 spent on UK groceries goes through a Tesco till.

## 3. What Tesco buys from Africa

**An important caveat first.** Tesco does not publish its purchases by country or product. The only hard numbers available are UK national import figures for 2025. Tesco's share of each flow has to be estimated, so the Tesco-specific numbers below are indicative, not audited.

### Direct supply: named African suppliers

Tesco's published supplier list includes several African businesses:

- **Kenya:** Flamingo Horticulture's farms in Naivasha and its Mt Kenya packhouse in Nanyuki. Flamingo supplies fine beans, vegetables and flowers.

- **South Africa:** wine producers in Stellenbosch and Wellington, Rhodes Food Group's fruit products operation in Tulbagh, and apple and pear packers in Ceres, Grabouw and the Northern Cape.

Tesco also has people on the ground:

- It runs agronomist-staffed "Agricultural Hubs" in several sourcing countries, including South Africa.

- It has employed a dedicated responsible sourcing manager for Africa.

- Campaigners have long described it as the UK's largest buyer of South African fruit.

### Indirect supply: the country-by-country picture (UK imports, 2025)

**South Africa (the largest African fresh-fruit supplier)**

- About $926m of fruit in total.

- Citrus about $273m, grapes about $227m, apples and pears about $133m, other fresh fruit about $121m, stone fruit about $72m, and avocados and pineapples about $60m.

- Wine also flows through South African suppliers.

**Morocco (the fastest riser)**

- About $520m of fruit and $337m of vegetables.

- Volumes reached 330,000 tonnes in 2025, up from 250,000 tonnes in 2021.

- Morocco is now the UK's leading supplier of raspberries and blueberries.

- It is also growing fast in tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, mandarins and avocados.

**Egypt**

- About $313m of fruit and $154m of vegetables.

- Grapes are the headline product. Egypt's share of UK grape imports rose above 15% in 2025, a record year.

- It also supplies oranges, strawberries, onions and sweet potatoes.

**Kenya**

- About $626m of total imports into the UK.

- Cut flowers about $250m, tea, coffee and spices about $152m, and vegetables about $136m.

- Typical lines are fine beans, mangetout, roses, tea and avocados.

**Ghana**

- Cocoa about $161m, fruit about $79m, and fish preparations about $74m, mainly tuna.

**Côte d'Ivoire**

- The dominant source of UK cocoa paste, supplying about 56% of imports.

- Cocoa from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana reaches Tesco mostly indirectly, inside branded and own-label chocolate made by manufacturers.

### Estimated Tesco slice

These estimates apply Tesco's roughly 28% grocery share to retail-relevant UK imports from each country:

1. **South Africa:** about $926m of fruit (plus wine) gives an estimated Tesco share of $260m or more.

2. **Morocco:** about $856m of fruit and vegetables gives roughly $240m.

3. **Egypt:** about $467m of fruit and vegetables gives roughly $130m.

4. **Kenya:** about $537m of flowers, tea, coffee and vegetables gives roughly $150m.

5. **Ghana:** about $313m of cocoa, fruit and fish gives roughly $90m.

**Total: about $3.1bn of UK imports, of which Tesco likely accounts for around $870m.**

Read this as an order of magnitude: Tesco probably sells somewhere around $0.8bn to $1bn a year of African-origin food and flowers.

For context, that is barely 1–1.5% of Tesco's £66.6bn in sales. Africa is a meaningful supplier to Tesco, but a small one, and that gap is the opportunity.

## 4. The World Food aisle: from niche to a £1.8bn category

**2010: the big expansion.** Tesco doubled its ethnic and world foods range to around 1,600 lines, and volumes grew by more than a third. It launched seven new ranges, including dedicated African and South African lines. Its buyers said they were specifically developing ranges for West African and South African shoppers.

**Proof that the model scales.** Tesco's Polish range grew from 20 products in 100 stores to 260 products in nearly 600 stores in four years. Its Caribbean range went from 50 stores to 270 in three years.

**The more recent push.** Tesco extended its World Foods range in existing stores by 35%, and added World Foods displays to 8% more stores. Caribbean meal kits and ingredients grew 14% in a year.

**Local tailoring.** Tesco uses Clubcard and local catchment data to range world foods store by store, especially in London. In practice, African products win store by store, where the diaspora lives.

**Today.** UK world foods is a category worth around £1.8bn, growing faster than grocery overall. West African food is among the fastest-growing segments. Industry voices say the aisle is still waiting for a breakout champion brand.

No African brand yet owns this aisle the way Encona owns Caribbean hot sauce. That is an open goal.

## 5. Tesco's Fairtrade footprint

**The pioneer years**

- In 2004, Tesco launched the UK's first Fairtrade flowers: own-label roses from a Kenyan supplier, with a target of 12 million stems in the first year.

- At that point it had over 60 Fairtrade products, which it described as the UK's widest range.

- It was also an early stockist of South African Fairtrade oranges and wine through the Thandi initiative.

**The pivot to its own standards**

- By 2016, Tesco called itself the UK's second-largest Fairtrade seller, with several million pounds of Fairtrade sales a week.

- It named South Africa, Kenya and India among its Fairtrade source countries.

- On bananas, it chose a different route. Campaigners said fewer than one in ten Tesco bananas carried the Fairtrade mark. Tesco replied that it pays its directly contracted growers on average 6% above the Fairtrade minimum price.

- Since 2017, all Tesco bananas in the UK and Ireland have come from Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade certified farms.

- Tesco has also committed to closing living-wage gaps on its banana plantations.

**The rivals**

Other retailers have overtaken Tesco on Fairtrade certification. For example, the Co-op has moved all of its fresh-cut roses to 100% Fairtrade.

**The takeaway for exporters:** Tesco values certification, but it values direct, audited, long-term supplier relationships even more. A Fairtrade label helps, but it is not the entry ticket.

## 6. How African agribusiness can position for Tesco buyers

1. **Get the certifications before the meeting.** GlobalG.A.P., BRCGS (or another GFSI-recognised standard) and Sedex SMETA ethical audits are the baseline. Without them there is no conversation.

2. **Use the official front door.** Register products on Tesco's RangeMe supplier platform so buyers can find you.

3. **Prove volume and consistency.** Buyers' first question is whether you can deliver the required volume at the required frequency. Smallholders should aggregate through a cooperative or an anchor exporter.

4. **Go in through an importer or category manager first.** Most fresh produce reaches Tesco via UK importers and packers, not directly from the farm. Win one of them, then grow into a direct relationship.

5. **Own a seasonal window.** Morocco's success comes from supplying November to April, when European supply is weak. Map Spain's off-season and fill it.

6. **Treat ethics as commercial risk.** In 2020, Tesco suspended avocado purchases from Kakuzi in Kenya over human-rights allegations. That put around 3,000 contracted outgrowers at risk overnight.

7. **Bring ideas, not just produce.** With Flamingo, Tesco relaxed its specifications to sell uncut fine beans, which saves around 135 tonnes of edible crop a year. Waste reduction, freshness and carbon savings are what buyers respond to.

8. **Build a brand for the World Food aisle.** Packaged African staples, sauces, spices, snacks and meal kits can start in diaspora-heavy stores and graduate to mainstream shelves. Ready-to-cook West African and East African meal kits are a gap no one has filled.

9. **Target Finest.** Finest grew more than 15%. Single-origin coffee, specialty tea, macadamias, premium avocados and fine wines all fit a premium story.

## 7. Lessons for African governments and agribusiness

1. **Value addition is where the money is.** One classic breakdown of Kenyan mangetout sold in the UK showed the farmer receiving about 12% of the final price, freight and handling about 20%, and the supermarket about 45%. Countries that only export raw produce leave most of the value in Britain.

2. **Brexit created winners. Be one.** After Brexit, UK imports from South Africa rose about 20%, and imports from Morocco roughly doubled. Morocco and Egypt combined policy support, investment and logistics to take share from Spain. Others can still do the same.

3. **Logistics is national infrastructure.** Cold chain, sea-freight capability and airport perishables handling decide who competes. More than 90% of African fruit and vegetables reach the UK by sea, so governments should invest in reefer shipping corridors and pack-houses.

4. **Use trade preferences actively.** The UK's Developing Countries Trading Scheme gives many African countries duty-free or reduced-tariff access. Export agencies should help firms use it, not just know it exists.

5. **Make compliance a public good.** Subsidised GlobalG.A.P. and BRCGS certification, accredited national labs and a credible labour-rights inspection regime lower the entry cost for every exporter in the country.

6. **Market the nation, not just the commodity.** Country-of-origin branding, as Colombia did with coffee, lets African produce command premium prices. Kenya has said it will push harder on export branding and value addition.

7. **Organise smallholders.** Aggregation through cooperatives, outgrower schemes and digital traceability turns millions of small farms into a supplier a retailer like Tesco can actually work with.

## Conclusion

Tesco is the single most important gate into British grocery. It has £66.6bn of sales, about 28% of the market, more than 340,000 staff and 3,700+ stores. Africa already supplies it with citrus, grapes, berries, beans, roses, tea, cocoa and wine. Yet African-origin products are likely worth only around 1–1.5% of what Tesco sells.

The countries winning share, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa, did it with consistency, compliance, logistics and timing, not luck. The next wave of growth is in value-added, branded and premium African products for the World Food and Finest aisles. The suppliers who show up certified, consistent and with a story to tell will find the door open.