International Maritime

Carriers, forwarders pile in to Africa trade as demand surges

By Greg Knowler slowing [ the ] turnaround of vessels so no other vessels can be berthed.

“ You can theoretically add ships, but if they just wait outside ports, you don’ t really increase capacity,” Orting Jorgensen added.

The bottlenecks signal Africa’ s poor schedule reliability. On-time performance in the second quarter was just 24 %, down 3 percentage points from the first quarter, with average wait times of four days, according to Xeneta.

Despite the infrastructure issues, Hapag-Lloyd expects to surpass 1 million TEUs into sub-Saharan Africa this year, with a roadmap to double that volume by 2030.

Carriers and forwarders are aggressively expanding their footprints across Africa to capture soaring import demand that has made the Asia – Africa trade lane the world’ s fastest-growing container shipping corridor this year.

About 70 % of Africa’ s total imports are from China and India, driven by the continent’ s demographic growth, rapid urbanization and the development of major industrial projects.

But demand is growing faster than the port and inland logistics infrastructure needed to support it, with enormous volumes from Asia flooding into the continent and overwhelming ports and hinterland corridors.

“ There are not many routes where container capacity has nearly doubled in two years,” said Stefan Verberckmoes, senior analyst at Alphaliner.

Data from Alphaliner shows the spectacular growth of the Asia – Africa trade over the last two years. On July 1 this year, 185 container ships were deployed between Asia and West Africa for a total combined capacity of 1.4 million TEUs, up almost 30 % compared with July 2025, which was 40 % higher than July 2024.

The latest volume data from Container Trades Statistics( CTS) also reflects the rising trade. Asia to sub- Saharan Africa in May was the fastest growing import region for the 13th time in the past 16 months on a year-over-year basis, according to CTS. Over those 16 months, African imports were up 52 %, with May’ s volume of 5 million TEUs representing an increase of 14.3 % compared with the same month last year.

Rates have risen in tandem with volume. Average spot rates from Asia to West Africa are up 43 % compared with the first week of January at $ 5,315 per FEU, according to rate benchmarking platform Xeneta. Asia – East Africa rates are up 35 % at $ 5,310 per FEU.

The trade figures are impressive, but the volume is placing Africa’ s developing supply chain infrastructure under severe pressure.

Thomas Orting Jorgensen, head of trade management for Africa at Hapag-Lloyd, highlighted challenges generated by the rising demand and the constraints this was likely to place on the market growth.

“ Terminal capacity, and especially inland capacity, is going to be the biggest bottleneck for continuous growth,” he told the Journal of Commerce.“ We already see that at key gateways. Most of them are choked, delaying and

“ There are not many routes where container capacity has nearly doubled in two years.”

“ The growth into Africa has outperformed our expectations and we saw that continue into 2026,” Orting Jorgensen said.

To combat Africa’ s port capacity limitations, Hapag- Lloyd is consolidating volume on fewer ships to improve operational efficiency where berth access is restricted. The carrier is using the Moroccan transshipment hub of Tanger-Med to combine volumes from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas onto single systems serving the West African port range.

The carrier also has a Middle East / Colombo-linked service into Durban, Tema and Lagos, and a direct Asia service focused on Kribi, Luanda, Pointe-Noire and Matadi. The East Coast ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam are served through partnerships with other carriers.

34 Journal of Commerce | September 7, 2026 www. joc. com