Dar es Salaam - East Africa’s biggest port at Mombasa in Kenya is fighting off competition from Tanzania by expanding railways and building new berths to tackle congestion.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is spearheading a plan to start constructing a $13 billion (R133bn) railway project in November that will link Mombasa to the capitals of Uganda and Rwanda.
Next week the Kenya Ports Authority will officially open a 19th docking station and is investing $320 million to add three more at a new container terminal that will more than double capacity to 2.3 million containers, the biggest upgrade to the port since 1980.
The government is also building a new harbour at Lamu.
Mombasa is losing regional market share to Tanzania as years of under-investment in transport infrastructure mean railways and roads cannot cope with the rising volumes moving in and out of the facility. The harbour serves landlocked nations including Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan, as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are among the fastest-growing economies.
“Kenya has been slow to expand its port infrastructure,” Anthony Hughes, a senior ports adviser at Trademark East Africa, said yesterday, adding: “It hasn’t kept pace with transport demand.” The Nairobi-based organisation helps promote regional trade.
Cargo deliveries from Mombasa to the Ugandan border town of Malaba, 800km north-west of the port, currently take an average of 18 days, according to Kenyatta’s office, which ordered the harbour in June to reduce the delay to five days.
The journey by sea of a container from Singapore to Mombasa, a distance of more than 7 500km, takes only a day longer, according to Wolfgang Fengler, the World Bank’s lead economist for Kenya.
Tanzania is spending at least $10bn constructing a new port at Bagamoyo, northwest of Dar es Salaam, where the existing facility is being upgraded.
The commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, handled 12.1 million tons of cargo last year, about 45 percent less than Mombasa, according to data compiled by Trademark East Africa.
The Kenyan port’s loss of business to Dar es Salaam has grown since post-election violence in the first two months of 2008 disrupted trade flows. Ethnic clashes across the country hampered traffic by rail and road from the port, causing fuel shortages and a spike in inflation in neighbouring nations.
Volumes at the Dar es Salaam port have increased an average 9.4 percent annually during the past five years, compared with 6 percent in Mombasa, Trademark says.
“Tanzania and Kenya are serving the same landlocked countries,” Janeth Ruzangi, the manager of corporate communications for the Tanzania Ports Authority, said. “Firms are going to choose to use the facilities that will handle the goods with the most speed. It is natural that we have to work towards improving our port in order to attract these firms.”
Gilbert Langat, the chief executive of the Shippers Council of Eastern Africa, said the shift in regional traffic was a “wake-up call” for the Kenyan authorities. The agency for importers and exporters saw Tanzania’s port operations complementing Kenya’s facilities, he said. – Bloomberg