Drewry: West Africa improving but more to do

The Asia-West Africa is growing at its fastest pace since late 2014 but the African region still has a lot of ground to recover, according to Drewry.

Container throughput in the southbound Asia to West Africa trade grew by 7% in the third quarter of 2017, but is some way off replicating its annual record of 1.5m teu, which was achieved in 2014.

For the first nine months of the year volumes are up 3.2%, sitting at slightly more than 900,000, but even if current growth rates were to be retained the annual figure would only reach around 1.2m teu.