Most manufacturers treat buyer risk as one question: can this buyer pay. In West Africa it is two separate risks — whether the buyer is willing to pay, and whether their bank is able to send the money out of the country — and pricing for only the first one is how a solvent, willing buyer still leaves you unpaid for months.
Buyer risk: the payment record
What you can actually verify before shipment is how long the buyer has been importing, whether they hold a current import licence for your product category, and whether previous suppliers were paid on the terms agreed rather than late or in instalments. A buyer with a clean record from other exporters carries a different risk profile to one placing a first order with no trade references at all. Ask for references from other suppliers, not from the buyer’s own bank — a bank reference confirms the account exists, not that it pays on time.
Country risk: central bank clearance
Even a solvent, willing buyer can be stuck if their bank needs central bank approval or a hard-currency allocation before it can remit payment abroad. This is a country-level constraint, not a creditworthiness one, and it shows up as a delay rather than a default — the money arrives, eventually, weeks or months after the terms specified. It is a separate problem from which payment instrument you choose, and neither a letter of credit nor a documentary collection removes it: both still depend on the buyer’s bank being able to move currency out of the country at all.
Export credit insurance
A policy from an export credit agency or a private credit insurer pays out, usually a large majority of the invoice value, if the buyer fails to pay for commercial or political reasons. It is worth pricing for orders large enough that a single default would hurt, and for buyers or countries where you have no track record yet. It is not a substitute for checking the buyer: insurers ask the same questions you should already be asking, and a buyer they will not cover is telling you something.
The advance payment
A percentage paid before production or before shipment is the simplest risk filter available, and it works precisely because it costs the buyer something to walk away. It will not remove the risk on the balance, but it changes what is at stake if the deal goes wrong partway through. Treat a buyer’s refusal to pay any advance at all, on a first order with no history between you, as information rather than as an obstacle to negotiate past.
The exposure ceiling
Decide, before you quote, the maximum value you are willing to have outstanding with any one buyer at any one time, and let that number — not the size of the order on the table — set the payment terms you offer. It is also worth being clear about what the ceiling does not cover: cargo insurance pays out if the container is lost or damaged in transit; it pays nothing if the buyer simply does not pay. Treating the two as one policy is how exporters end up covered against the wrong risk.
The rule: set the exposure ceiling and the payment terms before you accept the order, not after the buyer has already pushed back on both.
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