Abstract
In the last decade, inter-port competition in West Africa has become fiercer as captive hinterlands of ports continue to overlap and become contestable or shared. This is due to door-to-door supply chain services being offered by shipping lines and third party logistics service providers through inter-modalism. In addition, as cargo becomes more concentrated in the region, there have been calls for the selection of a hub location for shipping lines serving the region in order to exploit economies of scale. This paper therefore aims to evaluate the competitiveness of major ports in the West African region based on criteria selected by experts. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, port competitiveness was evaluated and ports ranked according to the total weights obtained based on the different criteria used. The Port of Abidjan emerged the most competitive port in West Africa with its strongest links being its efficiency and performance, infrastructure and political stability outlook in spite of recent political turmoil. The Lagos Port Complex, West Africa’s largest port in terms of scale and throughput, emerged fifth falling behind the Ports of Lome, Tema and Dakar respectively owing largely to its political stability outlook. The least competitive port was the Port of Cotonou in Benin.
Highlights
Ports have continued to evolve over the last two centuries
Ports began to compete with each other as they were seen as the last node in reducing costs and increasing efficiency, such competition being spearheaded by the gains in ocean productivity over the past several decades [1]
This study focuses on six major West African ports in terms of throughput
Summary
Ports have continued to evolve over the last two centuries. In the 19th century, ports were only seen as means to. (2015) Multi-Criteria Evaluation of Port Competitiveness in West Africa Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The liberalization of transport markets and concentration in the shipping industry have led to increased port competition worldwide [2]. There has been a shift in competition between ports and other actors in the maritime transport sector, to a competitive struggle among global maritime logistics chains [3] of which ports play a pivotal role. This paper aims to evaluate the competitiveness of ports in the West African sub-region. In order to evaluate the competitiveness of these ports, the paper first delves into the demand for maritime container traffic services in West Africa.
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