A haulage truck dispatched to collect an import container at certain African terminals can sit outside the gate for up to seven days. That single detail, shared by Toby Maier, CEO for the Middle East and Africa at DHL Global Forwarding, cuts to the heart of a continent-wide logistics puzzle. Driver wages keep running, fleet utilisation collapses, and port storage fees pile up with every hour the vehicle idles in the queue.
Africa's coastline holds 179 ports, according to a continental transport database published in Scientific Data in December 2025, alongside 132 inland river ports and dry docks. But Maier is clear: the problem is rarely a shortage of berths. The friction lives in the operational chain connecting ships to quaysides, customs authorities, and domestic distributors. A delay at any single node turns a routine delivery into a costly commercial ordeal.
The contrast Maier draws is stark. At facilities in Abu Dhabi, the time from gate-in to gate-out for container collection runs roughly 15 minutes. That gap between Gulf efficiency and legacy African port infrastructure is not just an operational inconvenience. It shows up directly on freight invoices, penalising shippers for wasted time as much as for the distance sailed.
"For me, it's always very ironic that, in a continent where available GDP per capita is the lowest in the world, people have the highest logistics cost per unit because of the inefficiencies in the overall system," Maier told TechCabal. He points to inadequate infrastructure, inconsistent clearance procedures, documentation problems, and limited transport capacity as the compounding culprits.
What a port looks like on a maritime chart and what it delivers to an importer are two very different things. For any manufacturer or trader doing business across Africa, commercial value comes down to how fast a container clears and how predictable that process is. Right now, for too many shipments, the answer is: not fast enough.
Originally published by TechCabal.