The Blueberry Frontier: Why Africa Is the World's Next Berry Superpower

Blueberries — The Continent's Fastest-Growing Berry Export

The blueberry, botanically *Vaccinium corymbosum* in its dominant highbush form, is a small round berry native to Asia, Scandinavia and North America, where early native peoples already recognised its health and medicinal value. For most of its commercial history, cultivation was confined to regions with the right natural chilling conditions. That changed as new varieties, climate control systems, shade nets and tunnels allowed production to spread to new parts of the world, and the arrival of low-chill varieties around 2010 is precisely what opened the door for warm-climate African production. The fruit is eaten fresh, but a substantial share of the global crop is processed into frozen, dried, juiced and extract form, with roughly 22 percent of the 2.15 million tonnes produced worldwide in 2024 going to processing rather than the fresh market.

## A Recent and Rapid History

Blueberries are a young crop in Africa, and their arrival tells a story of deliberate, capital-intensive market-building rather than gradual organic growth. Morocco was the pioneer. Initial trials began in the early 1990s, but large-scale commercial production only took off in 2004, led by a handful of producers in the Loukos-Gharb region in the north. Growth was steady but modest for a decade, then accelerated sharply. From 2015 onward, the industry expanded rapidly as foreign investment and experienced farmers pushed cultivation beyond Loukos-Gharb into Agadir and Dakhla. By 2020, Moroccan production had reached 35,100 tonnes, a nineteen-fold increase over 2005 levels.

South Africa's timeline is even more compressed. Production stood at under 3,000 tonnes as recently as the 2014/15 marketing year and has since climbed to an estimated 38,900 tonnes in 2025/26 — more than a thirteen-fold increase in a single decade. Zimbabwe's rise is the sharpest of all: the country is now exporting roughly forty times the volume of blueberries it shipped a decade ago, transforming what industry observers once dismissed as a niche crop into one of the continent's genuine breakout agricultural stories.

## Uses of the Product

Blueberries serve several distinct commercial purposes beyond the fruit bowl. The dominant global use is fresh eating, which accounts for the large majority of world output. Beyond that, the fruit moves into frozen (IQF) form for food manufacturing, juice and puree for beverages, dried fruit for snacking and cereal, flavour extracts for the broader food and drinks industry, and nutraceutical applications built around its antioxidant profile — the trait that has earned blueberries their "superfood" reputation in health-conscious retail markets.

## The CPG Opportunity

For anyone thinking beyond raw fruit exports, the blueberry value chain supports a wide range of consumer packaged goods: fresh-pack retail punnets, frozen and IQF berries for food service, jams and preserves, juice blends and functional beverages, dried snacking fruit, cereal and granola inclusions, blueberry-flavoured dairy such as yoghurt and ice cream, bakery inclusions for muffins and pastries, and nutraceutical powders or capsules built on the antioxidant story. The flavour category alone has become a serious standalone business — the global blueberry flavour market reached an estimated 8.19 billion dollars in 2025, with close to half of that demand tied to beverage applications. That is a signal worth noting: there is real money in licensing the flavour profile, not only in growing and shipping the fruit.

## Global and Africa Market Potential

The global trajectory points firmly upward. World production reached 2.15 million tonnes in 2024 and is projected to climb to 3.2 million tonnes by 2028, a 49 percent increase, with every producing region contributing to that growth. Notably, 17 percent of global planted hectares are not yet in commercial production, meaning a meaningful wave of new supply is already locked in regardless of fresh plantings. Market value estimates vary by methodology: one industry forecast puts the global blueberry market at 3.08 billion dollars in 2025, growing at a compound annual rate of 7.77 percent to reach 6.04 billion dollars by 2034, while global export trade was separately valued at 6.733 billion dollars in 2024 on roughly one million tonnes of volume. Analysts specifically flag Africa, alongside Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, as a region carrying immense untapped opportunity for the category.

Africa's current footprint on that global stage is still modest but growing fast. Sub-Saharan Africa — South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Namibia combined — produced an estimated 49,300 tonnes in the most recent reference period, with 90 percent of that destined for fresh export, overwhelmingly to Western and Central Europe. Morocco, tracked separately as a North African producer, is now larger than that entire sub-Saharan total on its own.

The buyers differ by origin. South Africa's blueberries move predominantly into the UK and EU, with newer growth of 15 to 20 percent in Middle Eastern and Far Eastern markets, and a landmark new destination: the United States, after South Africa officially secured market access there in August 2025 following eleven years of negotiation. Zimbabwe supplies South Africa's own domestic market during its early-season window and has broken into Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, alongside a newly significant China channel — Zimbabwe was 2025's standout performer for having secured zero-tariff protocols into China. Morocco's trade is Europe-led, with the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and France as its dominant buyers, while the country now sets its sights on expansion into Asia and the Middle East.

## Which African Countries Produce Blueberries

Morocco leads the continent decisively, with 71,700 tonnes of fresh production in 2024 at yields of over 18,000 kilograms per hectare, and 2025 exports projected above 82,500 tonnes on annual volume approaching 95,000 tonnes, grown across more than 7,500 hectares with a target of 10,000 hectares by 2030.

South Africa follows with 38,900 tonnes of production in the 2025/26 marketing year and 22,605 tonnes exported the year before, with exports forecast to exceed 32,000 tonnes by 2027/28. The Western Cape accounts for at least 60 percent of national production, followed by Limpopo and North West.

Zimbabwe is the fastest-moving story on the continent: roughly 9,500 tonnes exported in 2025 from around 650 hectares, with a 2026 target of 12,000 tonnes.

Zambia, Kenya and Namibia round out the emerging producer base, with Kenya's Naivasha region already confirmed in trials of new early-ripening varieties bred for warm climates.

## The InterAfrica Potential

Blueberries are tracing almost exactly the trajectory coffee followed before it: a raw commodity export with an underdeveloped domestic consumption base and almost no in-continent processing. That gap maps directly onto capability Africa One Group already has in motion.

The cold chain dimension is the clearest fit. Blueberries are highly perishable and depend on an unbroken cold chain from farm to port — precisely the kind of infrastructure RACS is being built to provide across the Kigali–Kampala–Dar es Salaam–Nairobi corridor, with real potential in intra-African movement rather than only long-haul export to Europe. On the hospitality side, blueberries slot naturally into café and bakery formats — jams, pastries, yoghurt parfaits, smoothie inclusions — giving InterAfrica Hospitality and any Anza Hotels or Koffee F&B programme a ready ingredient story.

The bigger opportunity may be domestic. Almost all African production is shipped fresh for export, and domestic consumption across the continent remains negligible by comparison. A branded CPG line built for African urban retail — jam, juice, dried snack — is close to white space. And the production knowledge itself is a natural extension of Masterclass Africa's Agripreneur Mastery track: Morocco and Zimbabwe's success has been driven as much by technical knowledge transfer as by capital, which is exactly the value proposition Agripreneur Mastery is designed to deliver to new-entrant growers across Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Berries also sit comfortably as an adjacent exhibition category alongside coffee and cocoa at the Africa Coffee Festival London.

## Producer Gaps and Opportunities

The constraints are real. Morocco's own industry has flagged land, water and labour access as the binding limit on its future growth, which should push the next wave of African expansion toward Southern and East Africa. Cold chain and logistics infrastructure remain the single biggest bottleneck for new entrants, since blueberries tolerate far less disruption than staple crops. Much of the yield advantage enjoyed by Morocco and Zimbabwe comes from licensed, protected genetics — smallholders without capital or partnership access to these varieties cannot compete on productivity. In-continent processing capacity is almost nonexistent, meaning the margin uplift from jams, juices and dried products is currently captured outside Africa. And the premium organic tier, which now represents close to a fifth of the global market, remains largely unclaimed by African producers.

Set against those gaps are real openings. Southern Africa's April-to-July harvest window complements Northern Hemisphere off-seasons, the same structural advantage that built Peru's and Morocco's export businesses. Global buyers are actively de-risking their supply chains away from concentrated origins as the U.S. market, now worth over 9 billion dollars, faces trade friction — and Africa is being explicitly positioned as the next frontier for that diversification. Market-access diplomacy is already paying off, with South Africa's eleven-year push into the U.S. closing in 2025 and Zimbabwe's zero-tariff China access landing the same year. And the intra-African branded CPG opportunity remains largely uncontested territory, waiting for the first mover.

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**Africa Brew Brief** — Investigative coverage of the commodities, crops, and value chains shaping Africa's agribusiness future. A production of RIC Brands Africa.