Abdulmalik Abdulraheem is Quietly Reinventing How Africa Moves Heavy Goods and Equipment

By Ferdinand Ekechukwu

In a region where infrastructure challenges often stall progress, Abdulmalik Olajuwon Abdulraheem is emerging as one of Africa’s most compelling supply chain thinkers. While the continent is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, the ability to deliver complex industrial projects on time and within budget remains a barrier to sustained growth. Abdulmalik’s career has been built around closing that gap.

Abdulmalik first rose to prominence at Dangote Sinotruk West Africa Limited, where he led cross-border procurement and logistics operations for one of Africa’s most ambitious truck manufacturing ventures. Dangote’s vision was bold: assemble commercial vehicles at scale locally and reduce dependency on expensive imports. Abdulmalik’s job was to make the supply chain work.

That meant navigating complex vendor relationships, customs bottlenecks, and shifting regulatory landscapes. But rather than simply manage chaos, he pushed for reform. He introduced structured sourcing scorecards and helped deploy a more agile vendor management process. Under his leadership, the team reduced turnaround times on critical parts, streamlined customs compliance through digitised workflows, and began experimenting with localised fabrication of selected components.

It was not only about cost efficiency. “Resilience is the new currency,” Abdulmalik says. “If you can’t deliver under pressure, you’re out of the game. The future belongs to supply chains that can learn and adapt.”

That ethos first took root in the solar energy sector, where Abdulmalik began his supply chain journey working with regional developers to expand access to distributed clean energy systems across sub-Saharan Africa. In a market often plagued by fragmented logistics, inconsistent suppliers, and slow-moving infrastructure, he was tasked with solving a deeply practical problem: how to deliver solar components reliably and affordably to remote locations.

His approach was anything but conventional. Abdulmalik helped design a logistics architecture specifically tailored to solar deployments, emphasising centralised storage near major ports, predictive inventory planning, and the strategic rotation of high-value tools and components across project sites.

The system allowed companies to pool resources, avoid costly redundancies, and reduce downtime between installations.
The impact was tangible. In one Northern Nigeria deployment serving multiple off-grid communities, his supply framework cut operational delays by half and accelerated completion timelines by 18 days without compromising quality or cost control.

“He understood early on that energy access wasn’t just about the panels, it was about the supply chain,” says a senior project manager at a pan-African energy developer. “Abdulmalik brought structure where most saw chaos.”

As global attention turns to Africa’s role in the clean energy transition, Abdulmalik’s voice and his model are becoming harder to ignore. He’s not building factories or laying power lines. But he’s making sure the people who do can count on a supply chain that won’t let them down.

And in the long game of infrastructure, that might make all the difference.