Connected Africa
Collaboration with various clients across Africa
Client: Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) & Various African Union States
Geographic Scope: 5 African Countries.
Project Overview
The AfCFTA and AIDA project was implemented as a comprehensive, multi-country B2B research implemented by AaretonBlue Africa on behalf of Boston Consulting Group, designed to generate robust evidence to support the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Accelerated Industrial Development for Africa (AIDA) agenda. It comprised two concurrent and interlinked segments: an Impact Assessment, examining trade-related outcomes and stakeholder experiences, and an Industrialization Progress Assessment, focused on sector-level readiness, constraints, and enabling conditions for industrial growth. The surveys were conducted simultaneously across five markets—Kenya, Namibia, Seychelles, Ghana, and Egypt—to enable cross-market comparability while capturing country-specific dynamics. Using a structured, sector-focused methodology, the study targeted different firms or companies across small, medium, and large enterprise categories, engaging exporters and importers through face-to-face, Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) with key decision-makers. Fieldwork followed a purposive sampling approach with hard country and firm-size quotas, extensive geographic coverage, and strict quality control protocols, including in-field supervision, callbacks, accompaniments, and forensic data checks. The research explored awareness and understanding of AfCFTA and AIDA, access to infrastructure and utilities, investment and financing conditions, decision making structures, employment and gender representation, training and capacity building, and the practical challenges businesses face in production, trade, and compliance. Findings highlighted uneven awareness of continental trade frameworks—stronger among large firms and weaker among MSMEs— alongside persistent structural barriers such as high production costs, energy tariffs, limited access to finance, infrastructure gaps, regulatory complexity, and logistical bottlenecks affecting exporters and importers differently. By integrating operational field insights with stakeholder perspectives across multiple markets, the project provides actionable, policy-relevant evidence to inform trade facilitation, industrialization strategies, and targeted interventions at both national and continental levels.
Data Collection Platforms & Technology
Our primary data collection platform is Survey To Go, which will be deployed in most of our studies. This user-friendly platform supports the team in running multiple studies from different geographies simultaneously. The platform runs on Android devices, which will allow the AaretonBlue team to:
- Allocate quotas for various studies at both the country and interviewer levels.
- Collect GPS coordinates to show where each interview was conducted.
- Record all or parts of the interview conversation.
- Close quotas as they are filled at a designated sampling point and within the various quotas.
- Provide dedicated interviewer login details to track and allocate all interviews to the various interviewers working on the study
- Collect each interview’s dates and start and end times to ensure proper tool administration.
In all our studies, we ensure that all data is transmitted to our central server for management by our Data and Statistical Managers. This process helps us maintain strict control over the data, capture any script changes effectively, and only use the final client-approved script for data collection. Additionally, we translate the final questionnaire into the primary language to ensure that all respondents can communicate comfortably