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Mercy Corps Ventures, the impact investing arm of Mercy Corps founded in 2015, has announced an investment in Logidoo, a logistics platform building the cross-border freight infrastructure needed to connect farmers, merchants, and businesses across the region. The investment supports the venture firm’s belief that efficient logistics networks are essential to improving food security, climate resilience, and regional trade in a region where transportation costs and supply chain bottlenecks continue to limit economic growth.
Founded in 2019 by Tamsir Ousmane Traore, a second-time founder who grew up in a family logistics firm and previously built and exited a courier company, Logidoo is a tech-enabled fifth-party logistics (5PL) platform purpose-built for Francophone West Africa’s trade corridors.
The startup has a unique approach where it builds corridors one by one by studying undiscovered demand, deploying free trade simulation tools that allow merchants to model costs, timelines, and customs requirements before booking, and then filling both outbound and return legs to make the unit economics work for all parties.
The platform now spans eight active corridors across Senegal, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, Gambia, and Tunisia, and its product suite includes a freight marketplace, a merchant ERP integration tool called Afridoo, a last-mile delivery network in Senegal, a heavy trucking aggregator in Ivory Coast, and a cross-border marketplace connecting African producers to regional and diaspora buyers.
For Mercy Corps Ventures, Logidoo is not just another startup investment but an opportunity to take a crack at a multi-billion dollar logistics industry. With intra-African trade sitting at just 17% of total commerce compared to 70% in Europe, the lack of logistics has become one of the main bottlenecks holding back food security and climate resilience across the Sahel.
As a result, transportation costs in the region remain significantly above global benchmarks, driven by poor road infrastructure, complex and inconsistent customs procedures, fragmented payments, and structural overreliance on informal networks.
The West Africa logistics market reached $45.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $71.5 billion by 2033. Senegal’s emergence as an energy and agro-processing hub, Ivory Coast’s deepening role as a regional gateway, and the formalisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) all point to the same conclusion: the corridors that connect these nations will determine who benefits from Africa’s next chapter of growth.
“Logistics corridors are the base layer connecting communities’ production to markets and maintaining that livelihood link even after climate shock. Logidoo is building that infrastructure corridor by corridor and doing it with the rare combination of deep local knowledge and technological precision,” said Rofem Egbe, Investment Associate at Mercy Corps Ventures.
The firm also sees the deal as a strategic complement to its existing portfolio companies such as Tolbi, which can aggregate thousands of smallholder farmers and scale production but the logistics cost of getting that production to market can exceed the production cost itself without a partner like Logidoo.
Tamsir Ousmane Traore, founder and CEO of Logidoo, said, “At Logidoo, we believe that logistics is more than moving goods from one point to another; it is about connecting farmers to markets, businesses to opportunities, and communities to economic growth. Our mission is to build the trade corridors that will unlock Africa’s full potential by making cross-border commerce simpler, more accessible, and more efficient for everyone.”
The investment fits squarely within Mercy Corps Ventures’ Climate Smart Technology thesis, specifically its focus on inclusive and resilient supply chains. Logidoo has helped reduce post-harvest spoilage among cooperatives in Kaolack and Casamance, contributing to income growth for participating farmers, and in conflict-affected corridors, Logidoo’s routes have served as the last functional link for delivering food and medicine to communities in Mali and Niger.
With this backing, Logidoo is positioned to scale the trade infrastructure that West Africa has long needed, one corridor at a time.
