Reflections on Sote: A Business Model for Freight Forwarding

On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Samora Kariuki, CEO and Founder of Frontier Fintech and former Director at Sote, a digital logistics and supply chain infrastructure company, breaks down the fundamentals of logistics in Africa. He explains the relationship between the size of an economy and its trade volume, and the role of a freight forwarder in making trade more efficient, sustainable and easier to coordinate. He also explains the primary stakeholders in logistics value chains and their roles, the margin distribution between them, what key problems in logistics can (and can’t) be monetized, and what problems remain to be solved.

[00:00] - Introduction
[02:10] - Sote’s founding hypothesis and why freight forwarders are the linchpin of trade
[09:12] - Mapping a logistics value chain 
[23:41] - The limits of “Uber for trucks” logistics tech and visibility platforms 
[36:11] - Sote’s business model
[47:27] - The relationship between efficiency and margin availability in logistics
[54:14] - Lessons learned from Sote
[59:34] - First principle 

Recommendations:

• Frontier Fintech newsletter: Frontier Fintech is a premier newsletter covering the African fintech industry across the entire spectrum from start-ups to incumbent players.

• F-Squared podcast: Frontier Fintech is a podcast about the business of fintech in Africa.

• Chasing Outliers: Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa. A report I co-authored on VC investing in Africa. 

Connect on social media:

• Samora Kariuki on LinkedIn and @SamoraKariuki on X 
• Frontier Fintech on LinkedIn 
• The Trajectory Africa on LinkedIn and @trajectoryafrica.bsky.social on Bluesky
• Tayo Akinyemi on LinkedIn, X, and @TayoAkinyemi.bsky.social on Bluesky