Standard competitive analysis maps formal competitors. In most global markets, this is sufficient — the formal sector accounts for the overwhelming majority of competitive activity, and the informal sector is either invisible or negligible. In African markets, this assumption is wrong. In many countries across the continent, between 30% and 70% of economic activity, social decision-making, and brand influence flows through informal systems that standard research methodologies are structurally incapable of seeing.

The informal economy is not a marginal phenomenon. It includes tontines and informal savings groups that compete directly with retail banking products. It includes informal traders who distribute goods more efficiently than formal retail channels. It includes community leaders, religious institutions, and peer networks whose opinions govern purchase decisions in categories from healthcare to financial services. It includes radio, community WhatsApp groups, and verbal recommendation networks that reach audiences that formal digital channels do not. When your competitive mapping stops at the formal sector, you are not conducting strategic analysis. You are studying a fraction of the competitive landscape and making decisions as if it were the whole.

The consequences of this blind spot are material. Brands enter markets assuming that the primary competition comes from formal-sector rivals — other banks, other FMCG brands, other healthcare providers — and design their competitive strategies accordingly. They then encounter resistance they did not predict: audiences who are already served by informal alternatives, whose trust is held by community institutions rather than formal brands, and whose information environment is shaped by networks that the brand's formal communications never reach. The brand's response is typically to increase spend on formal channels. This is the wrong answer.

“You are studying a fraction of the competitive landscape and making decisions as if it were the whole.”

The right answer is to map the full competitive landscape — formal and informal — before a strategy is designed. Newmark's Field Intelligence System (FIS™) does this systematically, using three competitive categories: Direct competitors (same sector, same offering), Indirect competitors (same customer need, different means), and Substitution competitors (what the customer does instead of engaging with the category at all). In most African markets, the most powerful competitors belong to the third category — and they are entirely invisible to standard market research.

The implications for strategy are significant. Once the informal competitive landscape is visible, it becomes possible to identify whitespace opportunities that formal-only analysis misses. It becomes possible to design communications that reach audiences through the channels they actually use, with messages calibrated to the trust architecture that actually governs their decisions. It becomes possible to build competitive strategies that are genuinely effective — not just well-designed responses to the fragment of the competitive landscape that standard research can see.