Afrigather This text was contributed to TechCabal by Bonface Orucho, through bird story agency.
Africa’s logistics sector is rising right into a profitable market and strategic hub throughout the world logistics community, as buyers’ confidence within the sector will increase.
A brand new report by logistics firm Agility confirms the worldwide logistics business is contemplating growth plans or first-time investments within the continent’s logistics sector.
In line with Agility Vice Chairman Tarek Sultan, “That is essentially the most optimism we’ve seen about Africa within the 15 years of the Index.”
Notably, 47.4% of respondents are planning extra investments in Africa, whereas 14.2% of the logistics executives from completely different corporations are planning first-time investments on the continent. Solely 6.6% of the executives are planning to exit or cut back from sure African markets.
This report coincides with elevated funding in Africa’s logistics sector, with railroads and ports present process renovations and tech-driven options focusing on rising alternatives like intra-African commerce.
A serious improve to the Lobito Hall, a near 100-year-old rail community linking the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Angola, and Zambia) to the Atlantic Ocean, acquired a significant increase just lately on the Mining Indaba in Cape City. The US and EU-backed hall operators signed a take care of its first prospects, who dedicated to utilizing the railroad to move minerals upon its launch in 2025.
Trafigura, a Singapore-based multinational commodity dealer, together with the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine (a mine within the DRC collectively owned by Ivanhoe Mines and China’s Zijin Mining Group) will export as much as 450,000 and 240,000 metric tons of copper, respectively, through the railroad.
In line with Jeremy Weir, Govt Chairman and CEO of Trafigura, these commitments will develop to make the hall one of many main rail transport hyperlinks in sub-Saharan Africa.
Revitalisation of the TAZARA railway, one other logistics route connecting mineral-rich Zambia with the Indian Ocean through Tanzania, is on the negotiation desk, with China proposing to inject $1 billion in its rehabilitation, in line with the Worldwide Railway Journal.
Elsewhere, the port of Maputo in Mozambique is the most recent of many African ports to draw deep-pocketed world buyers eager to speculate and develop their operational capability and basic effectivity.
In line with a 2024 Bloomberg report, DP World, working with Grindrod Ltd., will pump $2 billion towards port growth after profitable a 25-year concession extension deal that may finish in 2058.
As worldwide buyers more and more eye investments within the continent’s logistics sector, homegrown corporations from established operators like Grindrod to startups are scaling operations and leveraging know-how to construct logistics companies throughout Africa. Many of those corporations are responding to the just lately signed African Continental Free Commerce Space (AfCTFA) settlement, which can see the elimination of tariffs between member states.
Moroccan logistics tech startup Logidoo introduced in mid-February it had raised funding to develop an end-to-end logistics providing to five new African markets. The startup already has lively operations in 8 African international locations.
There was a gentle rise within the variety of comparable tech-led logistics startups in Africa. Tracxn.com, a startup monitoring platform, exhibits that there are an estimated 1,218 logistics tech startups working in Africa at present.
In line with Africa: The Huge Deal, startups within the logistics and transport sectors have been among the many prime three most-funded sectors final yr, elevating some $210 million.
In line with the UN Financial Fee for Africa, AfCFTA will increase intra-African commerce by round 40%. The UN physique referred to as on African governments to “implement the Inter-Governmental Settlement on the Trans-African Highways; finance Highway Security; signal the Solemn Dedication to the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM); absolutely implement the Yamoussoukro Resolution on the liberalization of air transport; signal and ratify the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to draw non-public sector funding in rolling inventory; help the civil aviation business” to completely profit from AfCTFA.
