Improving Ports Efficiency In West Africa

West African ports have served for colonization system and have been implemented especially for exporting the extracted minerals. The ports have been constructed to meet those requirements and didn’t have other roles. In1960many of those countries started administrating their own ports after independence. The port Authority mode that was in place didn’t show good results due to several problems that hamper the ports development in the region. After realizing the changes that have overcome in the ports domain in other region, West African ports have adopted several strategies to meet up with other world ports in the journey of development. The foremost among these strategies has been the concessioning of this operational arm of most of these ports to the private sector. It is believed that through such concessioning the highest level of efficiency will be incorporated into the sector in few years. However, the post consessioning experience of most west African ports have shown that a lot more is still required in terms of regulation and control. Excessive congestion resulting from the ports incapacity to meet the port demand, the port customs services procedures, and other non-sustainable development practices has been the order in West African ports. Recently piracy problem has been the main factor hampering the region ports. Many resolutions that have been adopted are still not meeting the expected results. A sustainable road-map of development is seriously required at this point to enhance an orderly development of West African ports. At present, the ports of this region, the port authority is still retained side by side with the concessioned ports. After concessioning the operational role to the private sector, the port Authority in this zone ought to establish its knowledge base such that it can exercise some level of control over the concessioned ports especially at the planning level. The logistics network across the hinterland in the West African region is at an early stage and has a considerable impact on the ports. Most of the big ports of the region like, Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Abidjan, Dakar and Tema lack interconnectivity across the hinterland. The dry inland depot port innovation to date is still very inefficient owing to the inefficiency of the inefficient connection system. Rail connectivity across West African hinterland remains a big constraint to inter-regional trade; what has a big impact on the ports as West Africa, road transport development is grossly insufficient for any meaningful freight transport. Despite Different economic cooperation between the different ports and also with the landlocked countries that have been created West African, ports still lag behind compare to other developing countries ports.In this study, we highlight different factors that have an impact on ports efficiency in West Africa. We used different approaches to evaluate the importance of these factors and proposed the approach of solutions. A logistics survey we conducted and different questionnaires have been analyzed for this purpose.This study’s purpose is to improve ports efficiency in West Africa. As ports system is big and complex, this study has been divided in several sections. Firstly, in chapter three we try to understand the general West African port situation. How those ports perform and their potentiality. In chapter four, a comparison have been made to better understand the problems affecting the ports and analyze a better use of the Chinese ports experience for west African ports development. Shenzhen’s could serve as a port development example for most African ports. port In chapter five, after considering the high transport cost freight forwarders face in the region, the need of a hub port, we made a hub-port implementation analysis in the region. We made an investigation of the ports performance in the region and their see ability to meet the requirement of a hub port role. We used the AHP method to determine a potential hub-port location in the region but not all criteria that could determine a hub-port choice have been considered. Criteria such as port Location, port capacity, port operation cost and port efficiency have been analyzed for the AHP evaluation. Finally in chapter six, in conclusion, we made some remarks and recommendations after analyzing our findings.