ABA Editorial · Aug 1, 2025 · 14 min read
African ports handle the majority of continental imports and exports but operate with dwell times, handling costs, and congestion levels that exceed international benchmarks. Mombasa, Lagos Apapa, Durban, and Djibouti are the largest hubs, each serving specific regional hinterlands. This report maps the ports landscape, the concessioning operators, and the structural challenges that shape African maritime trade.
Ports are the interface between African economies and global trade. An estimated 90 percent or more of Africa's international trade by volume moves through maritime channels, making port efficiency a critical determinant of how competitive African exports can be and how affordable imports remain for domestic consumers. The largest African ports (Mombasa in Kenya, Lagos Apapa in Nigeria, Durban in South Africa, Djibouti serving Ethiopia, Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, Alexandria and Port Said in Egypt, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Tangier Med in Morocco) handle the overwhelming majority of African container throughput between them. Most other African ports are smaller facilities serving primarily their immediate national hinterlands. African ports have been subject to extensive reform efforts over the last two decades, with concessioning to international terminal operators becoming a widespread strategy for improving operational efficiency. The results have been mixed, and port congestion, high handling costs, and long dwell times continue to characterize much of the continental port system. This report maps the African ports landscape and the structural challenges that define maritime trade across the continent.
African port geography is structured around a small number of regional hubs that serve their surrounding countries. Mombasa serves Kenya directly and provides the primary ocean access for landlocked Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and parts of eastern DRC through the Northern Corridor. Lagos Apapa serves Nigeria and provides connections into Benin, Niger, and parts of Chad. Durban serves South Africa and parts of the SADC region including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and parts of Malawi. Djibouti serves landlocked Ethiopia, which accounts for the vast majority of Djibouti's throughput. Abidjan serves Cote d'Ivoire and parts of Burkina Faso and Mali. Each of these hubs is a critical piece of infrastructure for its associated hinterland, and disruptions at any of them cascade into trade and price effects across multiple countries.
The hub structure means that port efficiency at specific facilities matters disproportionately for regional economic outcomes. A two-week delay at Mombasa affects not only Kenyan importers but also landlocked economies whose goods must pass through the same port. This in turn creates political pressure on the host country government to maintain efficient operations, while the revenue flows from port operations provide fiscal incentive to host countries that other infrastructure investments do not always generate.
Most major African ports have some form of private-sector operator concession arrangement, typically with international terminal operators including DP World, APM Terminals (the Maersk-owned terminal operator), ICTSI, Bollore Ports (now MSC after the 2023 acquisition of the Africa logistics unit), and others. These operators provide container handling, yard management, and related services under long-term contracts that allow them to invest in equipment, systems, and training in exchange for the right to operate the facilities and collect handling fees.
The concessioning model has produced measurable efficiency improvements at most ports where it has been implemented, with international terminal operators typically bringing equipment, operational expertise, and digital systems that public-sector operators could not always provide. However, the arrangements have also generated recurring controversies over concession terms, profit repatriation, and the balance of value capture between international operators and host country stakeholders. Several African countries have renegotiated concession terms during the life of agreements or declined to renew them at expiration, reflecting political sensitivity to the perception that foreign operators capture disproportionate value from national infrastructure.
Lagos Apapa is one of the most congested major ports in Africa and one of the most economically consequential because of Nigeria's population and GDP scale. The port has suffered from chronic truck queues, delays in container retrieval, difficulties in yard management, and the broader challenges of moving containers between the port and the dense Lagos urban area through inadequate road infrastructure. At various points during the last decade, trucks waiting to access Apapa have formed queues extending many kilometers through Lagos streets, with delays measured in days rather than hours.
Efforts to address the Apapa congestion have included dedicated truck call-up systems (requiring trucks to obtain slot assignments before accessing the port), new access road construction, expanded use of inland container depots (moving container operations away from the port to relieve the immediate hinterland), and partial shifts of throughput to the newer Lekki Port (which opened in 2023). Progress has been measurable but incomplete, and Apapa remains one of the most expensive and unreliable major port operations in Africa.
Mombasa has been the subject of sustained investment in both physical infrastructure and operational modernization over the last decade. Container handling capacity has been expanded, dwell times have been reduced compared to historical norms, and the connection between the port and the inland Northern Corridor has been improved through infrastructure including the Standard Gauge Railway linking Mombasa to Nairobi and beyond. The operational improvements at Mombasa have been one of the more visible success stories in African port reform, though the system still operates well below international benchmark efficiency levels.
The Northern Corridor linking Mombasa to Uganda, Rwanda, and further inland is one of the most important African trade corridors by volume and economic significance. Improvements at Mombasa ripple through the entire corridor, affecting trade costs and reliability for landlocked economies whose alternative routes (through Dar es Salaam or other ports) are typically longer and more expensive.
Tangier Med on Morocco's northern coast is the most operationally efficient African port by most international benchmarks. The facility has been developed as a transshipment hub connecting Mediterranean and Atlantic trade routes, serving both Moroccan domestic trade and international shipping lines that use it as a regional distribution point. Tangier Med's success reflects sustained investment, skilled workforce development, and strategic positioning advantages that most other African ports cannot replicate easily.
Egypt's Suez Canal, while not a port in the conventional sense, is one of the most important pieces of global maritime infrastructure and a substantial source of foreign exchange earnings for the Egyptian state. The 2021 Ever Given grounding demonstrated how disruptions to the canal cascade into global trade impacts, and more recent disruptions in the broader Red Sea region due to security concerns have similarly affected traffic and revenue. The canal remains critical to global trade patterns and to Egyptian economic performance.
Three indicators will shape African ports. First, whether ongoing investments at Lagos Apapa and other congested facilities translate into measurable improvements in dwell times and handling costs. Second, whether the transfer of Bollore Africa logistics assets to MSC continues without major operational disruption, maintaining the terminal operator capability that was built over the previous decades. Third, whether AfCFTA implementation produces increased intra-African maritime trade flows that would require enhanced regional shipping connections. Ports are where African trade meets global shipping, and their efficiency is one of the most consequential determinants of continental economic competitiveness.