Dynamar: African container trades growing exponentially

Maritime consultancy Dynamar has launched a review of container trades in the region of East and Southern Africa. According to this, the area has produced a significant growth, despite challenging conditions in many ports, in terms of infrastructure and other various bottlenecks, mainly associated with inland transportation. They explain more below.

In the minds of many, East and Southern Africa including the Indian Ocean islands form an insignificant trade area. That may be true if comparing it with high volume areas such as the Far East. Yet, this region’s combined port throughput approaches 8m teu, technically more than the whole of the Australasian continent. And then, there is more scope for growth.

Imagine that the East and Southern Africa container trades caught up in one year’s time with that of the USA with its population of 323m. In that case, the relevant African container volume would grow to 42m teu, up 1,200% from the 3.2m teu of 2014. A period of 25 years may be more realistic which would then translate into a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 11%!