When Professor Godius Kalyarara of the University of Dar-es-Salaam presented his growth diagnostic of maritime transportation in Eastern and Southern Africa to a UNCTAD Ad Hoc Expert Meeting in Mombasa in September 2018, he delivered a finding that should have reshaped regional infrastructure policy for a generation. More than seventy percent of the delays in cargo delivery across the region, he reported, consist of time spent within ports. The ships move. The ports do not. And in that gap between quay and gate, the region loses not merely days but development itself.
Eight years later, the diagnosis remains largely unheeded, and the urgency has compounded. The Red Sea disruptions of 2024 and 2025, the rerouting of global tonnage around the Cape of Good Hope, and the rising cost of war-risk insurance have exposed precisely the vulnerabilities Kalyarara identified. Meanwhile, the global seafarer shortage documented by the BIMCO and International Chamber of Shipping Seafarer Workforce Report 2026 now stands at roughly 39,100 officers, with a projected shortfall of more than 113,000 by 2030. The opportunity is real. So is the risk of squandering it.
Kalyarara’s methodology, drawn from the growth diagnostics framework of Hausman, Rodrick, and Velasco, applies a Pareto logic to maritime development. Rather than catalogue every institutional failing, it asks which constraints bind hardest. His answer is unambiguous. Port inefficiency, measured in container dwell times that routinely exceed a week against an international standard of seven days or fewer, stands first among the binding constraints. Container handling charges at Mombasa and Dar es Salaam run between 135 and 275 dollars per twenty-foot equivalent unit, against global best practice of 80 to 150 dollars. The number of containers moved per crane per hour, a direct measure of terminal productivity, falls well below the twenty to thirty achieved in leading ports. The consequences cascade. Over eighty percent of the trade flows of the East African Community either originate outside the region or are destined beyond it, meaning that port performance is not a domestic logistical concern but the decisive determinant of whether Kenyan tea, Tanzanian sisal, Ethiopian coffee, and Rwandan minerals reach world markets at competitive cost.
The second binding constraint is the state of the region’s railways. Kalyarara’s diagnostic was blunt: capacity utilisation on most existing lines stood below twenty percent. More than ninety percent of cargo moved by truck. The colonial-era metre-gauge networks of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo had decayed into partial or complete disuse, victims of deferred maintenance and institutional neglect. The Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, completed at a cost of 3.6 billion dollars and hailed as the flagship of Kenya’s Vision 2030, managed only 999,488 tons in its first year of operation against a break-even requirement of nine million tons, recording a loss of ten billion Kenya shillings. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti line, the first electrified cross-border railway in the region, faced similar challenges of cargo mobilisation. The lesson is not that railways are the wrong investment. It is that railways without integrated cargo strategies, without port-linked industrial parks, and without deliberate policies to shift freight from road to rail cannot achieve viability.
The third binding constraint is transport cost. Kalyarara cited UNCTAD data showing that African countries paid an average of 11.4 percent of the value of their imports in international transport costs during the decade from 2005 to 2014, against 6.8 percent for developed countries. The rule of thumb that developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania pay forty to seventy percent more for the international transport of their imports than developed economies has not been reversed. Nor has the concentration of global shipping capacity, which UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025 confirms remains in the hands of a small number of beneficial owners and flag states, leaving African shippers with minimal market power and limited leverage over the vessels that call at their ports.
The fourth constraint is the inadequacy of human resources and information systems. Kalyarara called for a comprehensive Maritime Management Information System integrating Automatic Identification Systems, Vessel Traffic Management Systems, and Port Operating Systems into a single Port Community System. Without such integration, port operations remain fragmented, documentation processing remains lengthy, and the region cannot offer the seamless digital connectivity that modern supply chains demand. This finding anticipates by several years the current emphasis on digitalisation in the International Maritime Organization’s technical cooperation programmes and the World Bank’s logistics performance metrics.
The fifth constraint is the mismatch between national transport development plans and regional agreements. The African Maritime Transport Charter, adopted in 1993, provides a framework for harmonising maritime activities, but has not been fully implemented. The twenty-five-year master plan for railway development, adopted by African heads of state in Liberia in 1978, contained eighteen projects to complete missing links within and between countries, yet only 15,000 of the proposed 26,000 kilometres were included in the United Nations First Decade for Transport and Communications. The East African Community Treaty contains detailed provisions on maritime transport and ports, inland waterways, multimodal transport, freight booking centres, and the harmonisation of freight forwarders and clearing agents. These provisions remain largely aspirational. The gap between treaty text and operational reality is itself a binding constraint.
Yet the opportunities are as substantial as the constraints. Kalyarara identified the region’s economic growth, consistently above the Sub-Saharan African average, as the fundamental driver of demand for maritime services. Ethiopia, Tanzania, Djibouti, Rwanda, Seychelles, and Kenya have been the principal contributors. Agriculture contributed forty-one percent of East Africa’s average real GDP growth in 2017, while industry contributed thirty-nine percent, with particularly strong performances in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. This growth translates directly into cargo volumes, and cargo volumes, if properly managed, translate into the economies of scale that reduce unit transport costs.
The second opportunity lies in the new railway projects. The Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, despite its initial losses, has demonstrated that modern rail infrastructure can be built in the region. The Dar es Salaam-Mwanza-Kigali line, designed for 160 kilometres per hour passenger service and 120 kilometres per hour freight, is under construction with a projected annual freight capacity of seventeen million tons. The Ethiopia-Djibouti electrified railway has been operational since 2016. The Nacala Corridor, linking the Moatize coalfield in Mozambique to the deep-water port of Nacala-a-Velha, was inaugurated in 2017 and represents a model of integrated rail-port development. The Zambia East Line, contracted to China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation at a cost of 2.26 billion dollars, will create a 1,500-kilometre corridor from Kapiri Mposhi to Nacala, significantly shorter than existing routes via Zimbabwe or Tanzania.
The third opportunity is the China-Africa infrastructure partnership, which has financed railway rehabilitation and construction across the continent on a scale not seen since the colonial era. The Benguela Railway in Angola, the Abuja Rail Mass Transit System and Lagos-Kano line in Nigeria, and the Nouakchott-Bofal railroad in Mauritania are among the projects that have benefited. The Lyon-Shamva-Moatize-Nacala railway linking Zimbabwe and Zambia to Mozambican ports represents the most recent addition to this portfolio. These investments create the physical infrastructure for maritime growth. Whether they generate the cargo to sustain themselves depends on complementary policies that Kalyarara correctly identified as essential.
The fourth opportunity lies in port-linked industrial parks. Ethiopia has demonstrated the model, establishing industrial parks in proximity to the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway to assure cargo availability. Kenya has begun similar development along the Mombasa-Nairobi corridor. Tanzania’s industrialisation drive, articulated in its Five-Year Development Plan, envisions comparable linkages. The logic is straightforward. Ports need cargo. Railways need cargo. Industrial parks generate cargo. When ports, railways, and industrial parks are planned as an integrated system rather than as isolated projects, each reinforces the viability of the others. When they are planned in isolation, each undermines the others, as the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway’s initial losses demonstrate.
The fifth opportunity, and the one most directly relevant to the maritime education and training assessment that this publication has previously examined, lies in the global seafarer shortage. The BIMCO and International Chamber of Shipping report estimates that the world will need approximately 22,700 new officers annually through 2030 to meet demand. The Western Indian Ocean region, with its established maritime training institutions in Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, and Comoros, and its emerging institutions in Somalia, Djibouti, Seychelles, and Mauritius, is positioned to contribute to this supply. But as the MET assessment has documented, the region faces critical shortages of cadet training berths, qualified instructors, training ships and simulators, and national merchant fleets. These are precisely the constraints that Kalyarara’s diagnostic framework would identify as binding. Addressing them requires the same integrated approach that he recommended for ports and railways: national policies linked to regional frameworks, institutional capacity building linked to industry partnerships, and sustained political commitment linked to measurable outcomes.
Here, however, a harder truth must be confronted. Many African policymakers speak of ship ownership and ship management as though these were natural extensions of port development and cargo generation. They are not. Ship ownership is not a question of flag registration alone, nor of political declarations at maritime summits. It is a capital-intensive, technically demanding, and risk-laden business in which global competition is unforgiving. The capital cost of a single modern container vessel or bulk carrier runs into tens of millions of dollars. The operating cost structure demands continuous technical management, crew management, insurance, classification, bunkering, and chartering expertise that few African institutions currently possess. The commercial risk is borne entirely by the owner, while the freight market cycles between feast and famine with a volatility that has bankrupted established European and Asian operators. Ship management, meanwhile, is a specialised service industry dominated by firms in Cyprus, Singapore, Germany, and Norway, whose competitive advantage rests on decades of accumulated technical systems, crew databases, and insurer relationships. Entering that market without comparable capability is not a strategy for growth but a recipe for capital loss.
Yet none of this means Africa should abstain. It means Africa should enter with clear eyes, sequenced ambition, and realistic timelines. The first step is not buying ships but building the institutional capabilities that ship ownership and management demand. That begins with national fleets in niche segments where African states have captive cargo, such as coastal feeder services, inland waterway transport, fishing vessel operations, and specialised offshore support where regional oil and gas activity provides a natural market. Kenya’s proposed national shipping line, Tanzania’s revived plans for a national carrier, and Nigeria’s Cabotage Act experience all illustrate that the gap between political ambition and commercial viability is bridged only by rigorous feasibility analysis, professional management, and patient capital. Cabotage policies can create protected space for national operators, but only if the regulatory framework is stable, transparent, and insulated from political interference. Joint ventures with established international ship managers, structured as genuine technology-transfer partnerships rather than flag-of-convenience arrangements, offer a more realistic pathway than standalone national carriers. Regional pooling of cargo, capital, and technical expertise through bodies such as the African Shipowners Association and the African Union’s maritime frameworks would create scale that no single African state can achieve alone.
The harder lesson is that ship ownership is not the summit of maritime development. Ports, shipyards, bunkering, crew supply, maritime finance, insurance, classification, and ship management are all components of a maritime cluster in which value is distributed across many specialised services. A country that cannot efficiently manage its ports, train its seafarers, or finance its vessels is not ready to own and operate ships. A country that masters those upstream capabilities, however, may eventually earn the right to do so. The sequence matters. Ambition without sequence produces white elephants. Sequence without ambition produces perpetual dependency.
Kalyarara’s central recommendation was for a holistic and integrated approach, with policies and institutional arrangements that treat ports, railways, and freight services as components of a single system. He encouraged countries to consider merging ports, railways, and freight services under one administration to maximise integrated decisions that guarantee connectivity. This recommendation remains unheeded in most of the region. Kenya has consolidated some port and railway functions under the Kenya Ports Authority and Kenya Railways Corporation, but coordination with inland container depots and border posts remains fragmented. Tanzania has established the Tanzania Ports Authority and the Reli Assets Holding Company, but the operational integration of rail and port services is incomplete. The East African Community has established corridor management institutions, but their authority over national infrastructure decisions is limited.
The geopolitical context has sharpened since Kalyarara wrote. The Houthi seizure of Mocha and Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the ongoing constraints on the Strait of Hormuz, and the rerouting of global tonnage around the Cape of Good Hope have imposed costs on the region that no growth diagnostic could have fully anticipated. UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025 reports that Suez Canal transit levels remained approximately seventy percent below 2023 averages as of May 2025, with ton-miles increasing by 5.9 percent in 2024 as vessels took longer routes. Clarksons Research reports that the ClarkSea Index rose sixty-one percent year-on-year to 38,717 dollars per day, with the Strait of Hormuz disruption causing a ninety-five percent drop in transits from March 2026. These disruptions disproportionately affect developing economies with thin logistical buffers. For Eastern and Southern Africa, they are not abstract geopolitical events but immediate supply-chain shocks.
The response must be structural. Kalyarara’s diagnostic points toward four priorities that remain valid. First, ports must be made efficient. The seventy percent of cargo delivery time spent within ports must be reduced through improved terminal operations, streamlined customs procedures, and integrated digital systems. Second, railways must be made viable. This requires not only track and rolling stock but deliberate policies to shift freight from road to rail, including axle-load enforcement, transit guarantees, and corridor management institutions with real authority. Third, regional agreements must be implemented. The African Maritime Transport Charter and the East African Community Treaty provisions on maritime transport provide the legal framework. What is missing is the political will to operationalise them. Fourth, human capital must be developed. The global seafarer shortage is an opportunity that the region can capture only if it addresses the structural constraints that the MET assessment has documented: berth shortages, instructor shortages, facility gaps, and the absence of national merchant fleets.
And within that fourth priority lies a fifth, uncomfortable but unavoidable. African countries need to think critically about ship management and ship ownership. It is not as easy as it is often assumed to be. Ownership imposes obligations, not entitlements. Management demands competence, not sentiment. The region’s maritime future will be built not by grand declarations but by port efficiency, rail reliability, trained seafarers, credible institutions, and the discipline to sequence ambition according to capability. Only when those foundations are secure will ownership and management become viable rather than merely desirable.
Kalyarara’s paper was presented under the framework of the International Association of Maritime Economists conference, an academic gathering. Its findings were rigorous, its methodology was sound, and its recommendations were practical. But academic papers do not build ports, lay track, or train seafarers. The gap between diagnosis and implementation is itself a binding constraint, and it is one that the region’s political class has yet to confront with the seriousness it demands. The economic growth that Kalyarara identified as the region’s greatest opportunity continues. The global demand for maritime transport services continues. The infrastructure investments, from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam to Nacala to Walvis Bay, continue. What remains uncertain is whether the region will integrate these elements into a coherent system or allow them to remain isolated projects whose collective potential is never realised. The answer will determine whether Eastern and Southern Africa captures its maritime moment or watches it pass.
Andrew Mwangura is a maritime security analyst. He writes on piracy, maritime safety, transnational organized crime and the political economy of Africa region.