IAPH Conference: Integration of African port industry proposed

Abiodun oba |

An integrated African port industry to reduce trading cost within the continent and between the continent and the rest of the world has been proposed.

A maritime expert and Managing Director of Springfountain Limited, Mr. Tunde Fagbemi, made the proposal on the sidelines of the just concluded International Association of Ports and Harbours, IAPH, Conference in Abuja.

Fagbemi said that very few of the over 400 ports in Africa are specialized saying not many of these ports were built with a current feasibility and economic viability study adding that more than 80 percent of them were built on what is called a National infrastructure requirement.

Fagbemi further explained that the ability to be able to acquire and construct new infrastructure must be given a very deep thought because it is a known fact that Africa does not trade within itself.

“ There are over 400 seaports in Africa, very few if any them is specialized; of the 400 existing ports, how many of them were built with a current feasibility and economic viability study?.

“Eighty percent of them have been built on what they called a National infrastructure requirement and what they call a slack, hopefully, that can run into the hinterland.

“While it is good that those existing 400 should be reviewed, to acquire and construct new infrastructure has to take a very deep thought.

“The first deep thought that you must think about is this, Nigeria, for instance, has a port that is doing one million Twenty Equivalent Units, TEUs, China has a port that is doing 400million TEUs, and you just saw the port of Antwerp doing over 400million TEUs.

“There is economies of scale once those ones can get $2billion and use it to build a new port or deepen their expansion, there can be economy of scale, and there can be ability to recoup that investment.

“When ten African countries that are less than one thousand kilometre apart from each other, now go ahead and incur $2billion each, to be able to acquire the same capacity that is with Port of Antwerp or the Guangzhou Port, you must ask yourself where is the commodity that will go through by way of imports, even by way of exports. And it is a known fact that Africa does not trade within itself, Africa trade always with the outside world.

“The world is consolidating in ships, building bigger vessels, moving from 4,000 TEUs to 20,000 TEUs. 20,000 TEUs vessel cannot visit 20 ports, 20,000 TEUs vessel can visit only one port and assume that that port she visits will distribute to others.

“The challenge is, how then you justify investment, while I am not telling you that Africa must stop investing in ports because we need it, and because these over 400 ports were built sometimes over 60 to 100 years ago have been over taken by events, why because the city has simply swallowed them up. As we begin now to think of new things that make a port work, we have to ask ourselves a very simple question. The simple question is, can the Nigerian Ports Authority, which currently holds the vice Chair status of the IAPH, begin to call African ports together and ask them, can we jointly finance a study, can we jointly justify what it is that we need to do, can we jointly look at standards, can we jointly look at the issue of environmental pollution, can we jointly shop for equipment, so that the economy of scale that they bring, can basically bring down certain costs and overhead.

“It does not stop any one of them from going ahead and compete but there must be collaborative decision making and there must be informed decision making amongst the regions because any one who says I am African region goes with an African perspective.

“Unfortunately at this meeting, where is the perspective? Everybody has come to their individual perspective, talking about our country; nobody is talking about African Union agenda, AU2060, that Africa is going to work together.

“AU2060 says there will be open skies, there will be the blue ocean, it is supposed to be an intra and pan African thing, it should be reflected in their thought process.”