Full Speed Ahead in African Ports

An article recently published in the “Jeune Afrique” newspaper highlights the major modernisation and improvement programmes adopted recently by African ports in a bid to increase their share in maritime trade worldwide.

Although global maritime trade increased by 75% between 1990 and 2005, the increase in the amount of cargo passing through African ports was considerably lower.

In North Africa, over the same period, annual maritime trade actually dropped by 8% to 345 million MT, whereas a total of 14.2 thousand million MT cargo was carried by sea worldwide.

Although the sub-Saharan African ports experienced a 20% increase in trade from 1990 to 2005, they were still lagging far behind other countries.

The various African ports concerned would appear to have reached the same conclusion: with the majority of cargo arriving on ever-larger container ships, and budgets being kept to the strictest minimum, major transformations would be required to bring their ports up to speed. At present, few African ports meet all three of the conditions essential for modern sea carriage of containers: entrance channels of an appropriate depth, specific container handling and storage facilities, efficient and rapid transfer of cargo to its final destination.

As a result, massive investments are now being made to modernise African ports, often with both private and public sector funding as in Dakar (Senegal) where the tender for the container terminal was awarded to Dubai Port World (see our article of 18/06/07) and the port authority itself has undertaken an ambitious building plan to extend and improve facilities.

Similar initiatives have been taken in Douala (Cameroon), Pointe Noire (Congo), Owendo and Port Gentil (Gabon) while Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Lomé (Togo), Cotonou (Benin) and Tema (Ghana) are keen to ensure that they stay in the race, as witnessed by Abidjan’s recent obtention of ISO certification.

In North Africa, the efforts made by Morocco to strengthen its Mediterranean traffic are echoed by those of Algeria and Tunisia.

28 Mar 2008 - 10:24:49