Why Africa Buys Bananas From Ecuador While Its Own Rot

Africa grows roughly 31 million tonnes of bananas a year, ranking among the world's three great banana regions alongside Asia and Latin America. Yet one of the continent's biggest banana buyers fills its markets from the other side of the Atlantic.

That buyer is Algeria. In 2017, Ecuador supplied 99% of Algeria's banana imports, worth $62 million. Algeria became so important to Ecuador that it accounts for 70% of Ecuador's banana exports to the African region.

Then politics intervened. In early 2025, Algeria boycotted banana imports from Ecuador, its primary supplier, after Ecuador backed Morocco's autonomy plan for the Sahara. Prices exploded. In Algiers, a kilo reached 850 dinars, about 5.85 euros, during Ramadan.

A North African country, on a continent of 31 million tonnes, discovered that its banana supply depended on a diplomatic relationship with a country 10,000 kilometres away.

*Why did Algeria spend years buying from Ecuador when Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Ghana export bananas from the same continent?*

**The Pattern Repeats Everywhere**

Algeria is not alone. South Africa is also among Africa's largest importers, and prices vary absurdly across the continent: Tunisia pays around $944 a tonne, South Africa about $222.

Further south, Namibia imported 6,394 tonnes in 2022/23 while growing almost none. Regions such as Kavango, Zambezi and the north-central zones offer favourable climates for banana cultivation, yet the national trial at Etunda consists of just 1,104 banana plants. Lesotho and Botswana are equally dependent on imports.

Meanwhile Nigeria, Africa's volume leader with 540,000 hectares and over 8 million tonnes in 2022, barely appears on the export table. Angola and Tanzania complete the top three. Uganda grows vast volumes of matooke, the East African cooking banana.

*If Africa's largest producers cannot feed Africa's importers, what exactly is the continent's trade system for?*

**The Yield Embarrassment**

Egypt, with the smallest planted area among Africa's top ten producers, achieves the continent's highest yields. Africa averages 12–13 tonnes per hectare, about half the global 23. Poor crop management and climate stress explain much of the gap.

*If Egypt can double the continental yield on a fraction of the land, why are the bigger producers not copying it?*

**Half the Harvest Rots**

Across sub-Saharan Africa, 40–50% of fruit and vegetables are lost after harvest. For bananas, a quarter to a half of the unripe crop is lost every year to poor handling. In Uganda, almost 15% of cooking bananas deteriorate along the value chain, half lost entirely, half sold at a discount.

So while Algeria pays Ecuador and Namibia waits on trucks from South Africa, African farmers watch their own fruit spoil.

*How many more food-security summits before someone funds a cold room? Is this tolerated because the people losing money are smallholders with no political voice?*

**A Banana Does Not Have to Stay a Banana**

Cooking bananas can become flour, wine, beer and weaning foods; peels can become soap. Green banana flour alone is a global opportunity worth over $500 million as a gluten-free alternative.

The models already exist:

- **Kenya:** Nyangorora Banana Processors in Kisii County makes flour, doughnuts and porridge from smallholder fruit.

- **Zimbabwe:** A Mutasa District plant aggregates and processes bananas for structured buyers.

- **Ghana:** Golden Exotics farms around 2,000 hectares and is moving into chips and purée.

- **Angola:** Novagro produces and processes for export to Europe and Africa.

Processing expansion is projected to lift African banana export earnings by 42%. The blueprint is proven. It is not being scaled.

*Why are governments and development banks still funding raw-commodity farming instead of factories?*

**Africa Sells Cheap, Buys Dear**

Africa supplied just 4.1% of global banana export value in 2023. Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique and Cameroon made up 79% of African exports in 2024. Benin recorded the world's lowest average export price, at $103 a tonne. Most African fruit heads to Europe, where the EU imported 5.3 million tonnes in 2024, mainly from Latin America.

So the circle is complete. West Africa ships cheap bananas north. Europe buys from Latin America. North Africa buys from Ecuador. And the fruit that could have travelled from Abidjan to Algiers, or from Kampala to Kigali to Nairobi, rots at the farm gate.

*Is AfCFTA a trade revolution, or another signed agreement waiting for infrastructure nobody is building?*

**The Questions Nobody Wants to Answer**

1. Why did it take a diplomatic row for Algeria to discover it had no African banana supplier?

2. Should African governments restrict banana imports from outside the continent to force investment in African supply chains?

3. Has donor funding focused on "growing more" made things worse by ignoring what happens after harvest?

4. Are African exporters being squeezed by European buyers, or underselling themselves?

5. If half the harvest rots while the continent imports from Latin America, should we stop calling it a food shortage and start calling it a food management scandal?

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The most abundant crop is worthless if it cannot travel. Africa's bananas will not build wealth by growing more of them. They will build wealth when they are finally allowed to move, from African farms to African tables.

**RIC Brands connects the infrastructure, trade corridors and investment partners that turn Africa's agricultural abundance into tradable, exportable value — from farm gate to global market.**