Ivory Coast port company is going to put money into inland transport

The main port of Ivory Coast is run by Africa Global Logistics. Over the next five years, the country wants to become an even more important transportation hub and entry for West African countries that are landlocked.

Regional Director Asta-Rosa Cisse told Reuters that the company wants to build dry warehouses with cooling systems and set up operating hubs all over Ivory Coast.

Along with running Ivory Coast’s main port in Abidjan, Africa Global Logistics (SDSC.CI), the world’s largest producer of cocoa and cashews, also moves goods to and from Burkina Faso and Mali, which are isolated neighbors.

The Mediterranean Shipping Company owns the company, which also deals in cotton, rubber, bananas, mangoes, and palm oil, among other things.

“Abidjan suffers from centralisation, with everything converging on the port,” he said.

She said that the company wants to improve speed and efficiency by spreading out its operations by setting up hubs in Ferkessedougou in the north, Bouake in the middle, and San Pedro in the southwest.

Cisse said that this year, the number of 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) that come into and go out of Abidjan’s main port will rise by 50%, from 1.2 million TEUs last year to 1.8 million TEUs this year.

“Like the rest of the economy in the area, our traffic is going up today.” “The region’s energy is making more export and import traffic,” she said.

The second container terminal at Abidjan’s main port, which opened in late 2022, has increased business by letting big ships from Asia, Europe, and the Americas dock. Before, these ships had to unload their cargo in South Africa and then move it to smaller ships going to West Africa.

The rise of the middle class and its greater buying of European goods, along with more infrastructure construction that brings in many goods, has helped cause the increase in traffic at Abidjan, Cisse said.