In its 2020 edition, the Africa CEO Forum, the biggest international conference dedicated to the African private sector focused once again on port development. According to the publication, it is a sector that “has a significant importance for Africa especially, since more than 80% of trade go through ports. Modernising infrastructures is therefore a key element for the economic transformation of the continent, its competitiveness, its industrialization and its economic integration”. The report mentioned above, entitled “Speeding up Mutation” states that several advances have been made over the last twenty years in the African port sector: extension works mostly, but also a few new constructions, like the Kribi deep-sea port in Cameroon. Generally, port development in Africa takes place on infrastructures, processes, digitization, containers and other flows (bulk carrier, ro-ro, etc.). That notwithstanding, « there is still a lot to do », the report says.

The top 10 port investments in Africa

Between 2005 and the first half of 2020, the Kribi Deep-sea Port has mobilised CFAF 280 billion of investments to fund Phase 1 of the construction works. (An additional 420 billion to be invested in the current 2nd phase, editor’s note). The share of private investments in the envelope of Phase 1, notes the Africa CEO Forum in its 2020 Report, has reached  0.5 billion dollars, that is nearly 276.140 billion FCFA. The Port of Kribi thus enters the Top 10 of the largest private investments mobilised in port development in Africa, according to the Africa CEO Forum, ranking it 6th, on an equal footing with the ports of Djibouti, Lomé and Owendo. Kribi ranks ahead of Pointe-Noire and Freetown. Of all the private investments mobilised by African ports, the most important were recorded in Tangier Med; nearly 2.5 billion USD (1,380 billion CFAF), to build a new container terminal.

Overall, during the reference period (2005 - 2019), private investment in African ports reached USD 15 billion (just over CFAF 8,284 billion), according to the Africa CEO Forum. The volume of capital invested by the port platforms even reached 50 billion USD (about 27,614 billion CFAF) when including public investments. These investments represent 13 times more than what was made during the 1990-2004 period.