How to Digitise Last-Mile Beverage Sales in Africa

Your cold room is full, but the shelf is empty.

Your team “closed the route,” yet out-of-stocks persist in key outlets.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to digitise the informal trade—where the real volume of Brewing & Beverage distribution in Africa still happens.

The winners are digitising the last mile - turning paper, gut feel, and cash into data, insight, and working capital.

Digitisation isn’t buying a shiny app. It’s an RTM strategy that fuses B2B e-commerce, distributor ERPs/DMS, van-sales automation, and embedded credit via mobile money, and then aligns people, incentives, and data.

Here’s how Brewing & Beverage distribution can move faster, sell smarter, and lift Distributor Performance with an RTM strategy built for the informal trade.

It is structured around ASSESSMENT → BLUEPRINT → CATALYST to lift Distributor Performance fast.

ASSESSMENT (Where to Play)

Start with clarity, not code.

Map your current Route to Market and quantify the profit pools by channel: kiosks, shebeens, depots, HORECA, and modern trade off-premise. Use outlet census data (or a rapid sample) to size opportunity by brand, pack, and cold availability.

Diagnose distributor health with a “Model Distributor” lens: territory design, coverage, fleet/van capacity, salesforce competency, and finance discipline.

Next, baseline digital readiness by, for example:

Retailer apps & B2B e-commerce: What % of target outlets own a smartphone? Which already order via WhatsApp?
Distributor ERPs & DMS: Can they capture order, inventory, and cash at outlet level daily?
Route/van-sales automation: Do reps use handhelds? Are routes optimised by geography, frequency, and sales potential?
Fintech: Where is mobile money prevalent? What are the active e-wallets and wallet limits?

Frame the prize in numbers: more productive calls per day, higher order value, lower out-of-stocks, and improved cash conversion. This keeps stakeholders aligned and gives your Brewing & Beverage distribution teams a clear ROI story—vital for Africa market contexts where capex is scarce and execution must be scrappy.

BLUEPRINT (How to Play)

Design, modules that will accelerate value. Here are some areas to consider:

B2B Ordering First. Launch a lightweight retailer app that shows live price lists, promos, and cold-availability deals. Incentivise with free delivery thresholds and small loyalty points redeemable as airtime or discounts. Keep user experience in local languages, with ultra-low data usage.
Route-to-Market Automation. Equip van-sales with handhelds that combine pre-sell and van-sell, guided selling, image capture for POS, and digital proof of delivery. Add route optimisation to increase daily hits, and standardise reason codes for no-sale and returns to feed coaching.
Distributor ERP & Inventory Discipline. Insist on simple, standardised SKU, pack, and price hierarchies. Enforce near-real-time stock and aging visibility. Connect DMS to the B2B app so orders auto-allocate to the right depot/van, reducing manual re-keying and leakage.
Embedded Credit via Mobile Money. With transaction histories from the app + DMS, partner with fintechs to offer small ticket, short-tenor, invoice-linked credit to reliable retailers. Keep it dynamic: credit limits expand with on-time repayment and shrink with risk signals. Collect via e-wallet to reduce cash handling risk.
Data & Guardrails. Build a minimal data layer for daily scorecards: coverage, strike rate, average order value, on-time delivery, OOS %, and Distributor Performance KPIs. Lock governance cadence (weekly distributor huddles, monthly JBP reviews) to drive habits, not heroics.

CATALYST (How to Win)

The catalyst is disciplined change management that deals with people, process, and then platform. Here are some areas to consider:

Frontline adoption: Train reps and drivers with bite-size, in-van micro-learning. Shadow for two weeks post-go-live; celebrate early wins publicly.
Sales leadership: Coach supervisors to use new dashboards to run stand-ups: yesterday’s hits/misses, outlet follow-ups, route fixes, and POS gaps.
Retailer love: Make the app worth opening - reliable delivery slots, instant e-receipts, and “buy 10, get 1 cold” style promos. Surprise-and-delight: occasional free ice, crate swaps, or visibility kits for high-loyalty outlets.
Cash to growth: Redirect reduced leakage and faster collections into cold equipment, market return packs, and festival activations that actually move volume.
Relentless simplification: Kill features that don’t drive sell-out. Add only what helps reps sell and retailers reorder—everything else is noise.

Digitising the last-mile in Africa isn’t a technology project, it’s an RTM strategy that compounds: better data → sharper execution → smarter credit → more availability → more cold drinks sold.

Start small, prove value in one city/route, then scale with playbooks.

Background to Distributor Selection & Management

I have written about this in earlier articles. We consider the three phases of Distributor Management & Selection as follows:

These phases follow the process that we call the A-B-C of Route to Market. This model simplifies the world of RtM into a series of three steps that any RtM practitioner can execute.

🤔 If you’re tackling similar challenges, I’d love to compare notes—what’s working (and what’s not) in your market?

💬 Please do share your experiences or challenges in the comments.

📩 Let’s connect if you’d like to explore this for your organisation.