The Knowledge Gap in Physical Commodity Trading — and the Guide I’m Building to Close It
Why I’m Creating an Operator’s Guide to Physical Commodity Trading
Whether you are moving minerals, agricultural commodities, petroleum products, or building a firm around physical trade more broadly, one reality becomes clear very quickly:
this industry is not difficult because opportunity is absent.
It is difficult because the knowledge is fragmented, the operating environment is uneven, and the logic beneath successful execution is rarely explained in a way that is clear, structured, and transferable.
That is why I have been putting together The Operator’s Guide to Physical Commodity Trading: Execution, Risk, and Control in African and Informal Commodity Markets, which will be available for preorder on April 20th.
This guide is not simply about getting into commodities.
It is about learning how to operate properly within the industry — and, just as importantly, how to build stronger firms, better teams, tighter systems, and more disciplined execution around the realities of physical trade, especially in African markets.
Why I’m creating it
One of the most elusive things about physical commodity trading is that so much of the industry remains unnecessarily difficult to decode.
Not because the knowledge does not exist.
But because it is rarely organized in a way that allows people to build from it properly.
I remember one of my earliest experiences with this very clearly: trying to understand how to calculate oil and gas wholesale marketing pricing.
A seller had quoted ICE +5.
“ICE?” I thought. We were talking about oil. What did ice have to do with any of this?
In the most condescending voice, he replied, “If you have anyone in the industry, they will know what that means.”
And the truth is, moments like that are not just about information. They are also about power.
Because in commodities, one of the worst things that can happen to you is to be read immediately as a newcomer. And if you are a woman, especially operating in certain male-dominated African trade environments, that exposure can come with an additional layer of contempt. There are men in this industry who do not simply want to assess whether you know the market. They want to remind you that they believe you should not have an edge in the first place. How dare you think you can enter the room informed? How dare you think you can negotiate, structure, or compete?
That, too, is part of the operating environment.
The challenge is that you cannot fake your way through it for long. They know almost instantly whether you are inside the language of the market or still trying to find your footing. And for some people, especially those who mistake gatekeeping for strength, that moment becomes an opportunity to patronize, intimidate, or test you.
But everyone has to learn somehow.
So I responded confidently: “Yes, I know.”
I did not.
It took me an entire weekend to figure it out.
And even then, that was only the beginning. The seller’s price was atrocious, but I did not yet have the knowledge to fully understand just how uncompetitive it was. It took me another week of dissecting the market to see clearly enough just how bad the offer really was.
The problem was never that I lacked the ability to understand it.
The problem was that no one had laid it out plainly.
The logic was buried inside fragments, assumptions, industry shorthand, and knowledge that seemed to circulate most easily among people who were already inside the room.
That is one of the defining frustrations of this industry.
You cannot always simply Google your way to operational clarity.
You can find terminology. You can find broad concepts. You can find surface explanations. But when it comes to how things are actually structured, priced, coordinated, controlled, standardized, and executed in the real world — especially across African corridors — the answers are often scattered.
And when knowledge is scattered, firms become inconsistent.
Teams become dependent on personalities instead of systems.
Processes stay informal when they should be codified.
Execution becomes fragile when it should be repeatable.
It also leaves people vulnerable to another reality this guide will address: that success in this industry is not only about understanding commodities themselves, but also about learning how to navigate ego, hierarchy, gendered power, cultural nuance, gatekeeping, and the behavioral dynamics that shape how business is actually done.
That is the gap this guide is meant to address.
Who this guide is for
This guide is for entrepreneurs building in trade, trading firms, operators, new and existing staff, and those who may already understand commerce broadly but are still learning how to operate effectively in African business environments.
It is also for organizations that do not want to remain dependent on oral culture, fragmented know-how, or loosely held process.
Because one of the major problems in this space is that too much critical knowledge lives inside people rather than inside institutions.
And that is not how strong firms are built.
A serious firm needs more than access to deals.
It needs operating logic.
It needs standardized processes.
It needs systems that can train staff, reduce ambiguity, improve handoffs, sharpen accountability, and create continuity even when the environment itself is not perfectly structured.
That is part of what this guide is intended to help with.
Beyond trade: building the firm itself
What I am creating is not only a guide to physical commodity trading.
It is also, in part, a guide to how knowledge from this industry can be translated into a proper corporate operating framework.
Drawing on my Harvard executive training, one of the things I care deeply about is not just understanding the trade itself, but understanding how to design an organization around it: how to build processes, how to structure decision-making, how to optimize execution, and how to turn experience into institutional knowledge rather than leaving it trapped in informal habits.
This matters enormously in African business.
Not because African markets are uniquely deficient, but because many operating environments on the continent require firms to manage a more complex mix of formal procedure, informal realities, relationship-based execution, fragmented infrastructure, and uneven administrative conditions.
If you do not build proper internal systems around that complexity, you do not create agility.
You create vulnerability.
The answer is not to dismiss the environment.
The answer is to become more rigorous inside the firm.
To create stronger internal clarity where the external environment may be inconsistent.
To build process where there is fragmentation.
To build discipline where there is drift.
To create institutional memory where too much is otherwise left unspoken.
That is what I mean by helping firms standardize the unstructured.
Not erasing reality, but designing around it intelligently.
What I want this guide to help people do
I want this guide to help serious operators and firms move from scattered knowledge to structured capability.
I want it to help people understand not only the mechanics of physical trade, but how to build teams and firms that can operate with more maturity inside it.
I want it to help companies onboard new staff faster, think more clearly about process, identify operational blind spots earlier, and create stronger internal standards around execution.
I want it to help entrepreneurs avoid reinventing the wheel every time they enter a new corridor, a new commodity, or a new phase of growth.
And I want it to give people something this industry does not offer nearly enough of:
clear answers.
Clear answers to questions that too often remain vague.
Clear answers to things people are expected to somehow “pick up.”
Clear answers that can save time, sharpen judgment, and strengthen the business itself.
Because in a field like this, clarity is not cosmetic.
It is operational leverage.
What the Guide Will Help You Navigate
From learning how to reverse engineer failure in a deal before it happens, to building stronger structures around payment, verification, documentation, and execution, this guide is designed to teach far more than transaction theory alone. It will also cover the practical questions people are often left to figure out the hard way: how to identify weaknesses before they become losses, how to respond when a transaction begins to break down, how to think about recovery and enforcement if money has been lost, and how to operate more intelligently within African business environments where success often depends as much on cultural fluency, behavioral judgment, and situational adaptability as it does on formal commercial knowledge. Just as importantly, it will help readers understand how to navigate difficult situations on the ground in Africa with greater sophistication — how to read the room, how to adapt culturally without losing authority, how to manage tension, how to enforce where necessary, and how to move through complex business environments with far more control, maturity, and strategic awareness.
Why this matters now
As African trade continues to mature, the firms that endure will not simply be the ones with access.
They will be the ones with the strongest internal architecture.
The ones that know how to translate opportunity into process.
The ones that know how to move from personality-driven execution to system-driven execution.
The ones that know how to build repeatability, discipline, and intelligence into the firm itself.
That is the larger ambition behind this guide.
Not just to explain the trade.
But to help build better operators, better teams, and better companies around it.
Available for preorder on April 20th
The Operator’s Guide to Physical Commodity Trading will be available for preorder on Monday, April 20th.
I’m excited to finally begin sharing it.
Because this is not just about making the industry more legible.
It is about making serious operators more powerful inside it.
If you’d like to be among the first to know when the preorder goes live, make sure you’re subscribed to my Substack.
There is a free subscription option if you simply want updates, announcements, and access to select public writing.
And for those who want my more in-depth analysis, frameworks, and private trade intelligence, there is also a premium subscription where I share deeper insights into African business, physical commodity trading, and the strategic realities of operating across these markets.