The conversion to electric and the global economic crisis are changing the Italian automotive sector. Chinese manufacturers are adopting increasingly aggressive trade policies and traditional OEMs are choosing to relocate outside Italy. Europe, with the Green Deal, accelerates toward going green. The Italian industry, born around the success of FIAT, is composed of hundreds of small and medium-sized companies. Today, these companies are facing major challenges, while defining new business and production strategies.
The Sector’s New Challenges: Digitalization and Internationalization
The Automotive sector must therefore reinvent itself: it needs to focus on digitalization and international expansion to find new markets, partners and business models, capable of responding to changes in consumer demand and preferences. It must face what’s about to happen by focusing on digitalization and internationalization with the search for new target markets, new partners, and new business and production methods.
Roncucci&Partners, after gathering industry insights and performing country audits, is now able to propose a strategy for the Italian component and aftermarket sectors and that organically combines digitalization and internationalization. First presented at Autopromotec 2025 on May 22, the strategy has seen growing interest from companies.
In the Automotive World, Italy Targets Morocco to Expand in Africa
The continent that is growing the most both economically and demographically is Africa: it is African countries that show the highest rates of growth in GDP, birth rate, urbanization, and investment in logistics and road transport.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is projected to grow from 1 billion to 2 billion by 2050, accounting for half of the world’s population growth, with the working-age population growing faster than any other group. Nigeria will become the third most populous country in the world by 2070, and the population will be mostly concentrated in large cities.
The African Mobility Boom
The explosion in demand for mobility in Africa-private cars, public cars, trucks, buses-will make this continent the area with the highest potential for our businesses. The African automotive market is predominantly made up of used diesel-powered vehicles. This continent will express a growing demand for cheap but more reliable car parts than those from China, and needs efficient networks of garages distributed along all cargo handlings that will grow with the recent establishment of the new African Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Morocco: the strategic bridge into Africa
Morocco is the ideal country as a bridge to the African Continent because of its opportunities and political stability. It has become home to the production of Stellantis, Renault-a component production center for the entire global group-BYD. No longer just for bodies and auto parts, but also for engines and new technologies.
Through the Mediterranean port of Tanger Med it already exports 700,000 cars a year to Europe. By 2030, they will rise to one million thanks to concomitant free trade agreements with the European Union, the U.S. and the African Continent.
Around the industrial areas of Kénitra and Tanger, a top-notch automotive ecosystem has developed in just a few years. This is complemented by the contribution of electronics and aerospace companies.
Roncucci&Partners’ strategy for Italian SMEs
The Italian automotive industry is facing a momentous challenge. To face it, strategies that combine digitalization and internationalization are needed. Africa, with Morocco as a gateway, represents the future for companies in the sector. Now is the time to look ahead and build new routes towards success.
Roncucci&Partners offers individual and collective market access routes to Italian companies. These include missions, fair participation, partner search, commercial or productive establishment, and, above all, networking. This will be followed by proposals on insertion opportunities in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.
At Roncucci&Partners we help companies develop themselves and their business, embrace change and evolve to thrive in a world that is increasingly complicated, insidious and requires great expertise. We do this by applying punctual methods and rigorous strategies, the result of many years of experience and the richness of the numerous success stories we have conducted all over the world. Passion and method are indeed our guides to enhance the present and build the future.
