Port users set for better services as EA states battle for dominance

[Deeq A.]

Singapore flagged vessel MV NYK Clara docked at the port of Mombasa on June 25, 2021 on its way to Dar es Salaam after it made its maiden call. In this financial year, Kenya and Tanzania have put modernisation of ports at the top of the list of priority investments. PHOTO | FILE | NMG

 

A quiet, yet vicious battle for the shipping business is under way in Eastern Africa with Tanzania, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia as the protagonists.

Tanzania, home to the most ambitious port project in the region — the $10 billion Bagamoyo Port — has announced plans to revive it construction, potentially turning the tables on its competitors. The project features a special economic zone and industrial park that are billed to attract at least 700 business units and dominate the freight business along Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline, eclipsing Kenya’s equally ambitious Lamu port project.

At a meeting with the Tanzania National Business Council in Dar es Salaam recently, President Samia Suluhu disclosed that her government had revived discussions with the Chinese government with the aim of resuming negotiations over funding for the project. The negotiations were torpedoed by President John Magufuli in May 2019 over what he described as unfair investment conditions proposed by Beijing. The project was mooted by Magufuli’s predecessor Jakaya Kikwete and as one of his key legacy projects. Now hope is rife in Tanzania that the project will soon come to fruition.

But in the Horn, DP World, a United Arab Emirates ports operator, opened its upgraded container terminal at Berbera, the main seaport in the semi-independent Somalia state of Somaliland, putting Berbera in a head-to-head rivalry with the Port of Djibouti’s Doraleh Container Terminal for business from the Ethiopian market.

Coming at a time Kenya’s Lapsset anchor project, the Lamu Port, is still finding a footing as a transhipment hub, Nairobi is already rattled and is moving to shore up its business against the upcoming onslaught.

Such is the importance Nairobi and Dodoma have attached to this sector that in the current financial year they have put modernisation of ports at the top of the list of priority investments with increased budgets meant to enhance efficiency and increase throughput.

The East Africa

Qaran News