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This study is timely because several investments are planned for container terminals in Sub-Saharan Africa. From a public policy perspective, disentangling the reasons behind cargo delays in ports is crucial to understanding:a) whether projects by the World Bank and other donors have addressed the most salient problems; and b) whether institutional port reform and infrastructure, sometimes complemented by customs reform, are the most appropriate approaches or should be adapted. Without such identification and quantification, projects may ultimately result in a limited impact, and structural problems of long delays will remain. Dwell time figures are a major commercial instrument used to attract cargo and generate revenues. Therefore, the incentives for a port authority and a container terminal operator are increasingly strong to lower the real figure to attract more cargo. At the same time, ports are more and more in competition, so the question of how to obtain independently verifiable dwell time data is increasingly critical to provide assurance that interventions are indeed having the intended effect.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a serious infrastructure deficit-estimated at about 48 billion a year-which is impeding the continent's competitiveness and hence its economic growth. How to solve this problem? Some advocate building more infrastructure while others suggest privatizing, or contracting out to the private sector, the management of infrastructure so that the discipline of the market will lead to more and better quality services.This book graphically illustrates the problem in the case of Africa's ports. With the exception of Durban, cargo dwell times-the amount of time cargo spends in the port-average about 20 days in African ports, compared with 3-4 days in most other international ports. None of the past attempts to solve this problem have worked. The reason-and this is the major contribution of this volume-is that long dwell times are in the interest of certain public and private actors in the system. Importers use the ports to store their goods. Customs brokers have little incentive to move the goods because they can pass on the costs of delay to the importers. And when the domestic market is a monopoly, the downstream producer has an incentive to keep the cargo dwell times long as a way of deterring entry of other producers. The net result is inordinately long dwell times, ineffective interventions, and globally uncompetitive industries in African countries. The solution to decrease dwell time in these ports relies mainly on the challenging task of breaking the private sector's collusion and equilibrium between public authorities, logistics operators, and some shippers and not on investing massively in infrastructure. Addressing the challenge will also require that there be political support from the general public for reforms that will promote their interests. And before they offer their political support, the public needs to be

This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. The AICD provides a baseline against which future improvements in infrastructure services can be measured, making it possible to monitor the results achieved from donor support. It also offers a more solid empirical foundation for prioritizing investments and designing policy reforms in the infrastructure sectors in Africa. The book draws upon a number of background papers that were prepared by World Bank staff and consultants, under the auspices of the AICD. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's infrastructure: A time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African union commission heads of state summit on infrastructure.

The Theory demonstrates that oil price and oil volatility (OVX) are significant determinants of economic activity; however, studies seldom consider both variables in the oil-exchange rate nexus and ignore the distributional heterogeneity of the exchange rate. We investigate their joint effect and employ both the quantile regression and Markov switching models to address this. We differentiate between positive/negative shocks and control for the effect of the global financial crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We observe that OVX shocks significantly impact the exchange rate for all countries whereas, oil price shocks only affect the exchange rate of oil importing countries. Rising (falling) OVX causes the local currency to depreciate (appreciate). The impact of rising or falling OVX is the same for oil importing and oil exporting countries whereas the impact of rising and falling oil price varies. The impact of oil price and OVX on exchange rate is affected by market conditions. The exchange rate responds to oil price and OVX mostly at lower quantiles (bearish markets) for all countries, which reveals investors sensitivity. In contrast, a weak to no significant response is observed at the higher quantiles (bullish market). Our results are robust in model selection (Markov switching models).

The emergence and diffusion of coronavirus (COVID-19) have brought a lot of impacts on various spheres of human endeavours including maritime trading. This paper explores the effect of the lockdown on maritime port calls for selected vessels in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) regions (East, Middle, South, and West Africa). The study utilizes port calls data of the maritime profile of the global economies obtained from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistics between 2018 and 2021. Data include port calls for liquid bulk carrier, liquefied petroleum gas, dry bulk carrier, dry break bulk carrier, roll-on-roll-off, and container carrier. The analysis of data involves the use of exploratory technique to reveal dimensions of performance by various carriers across the regions. The results picture the kind of response of port calls in all the regions akin to the response from other regions of the world. However, the study observes that though responses to COVID-19 lockdown across the globe were similar, SSA regions were slow in recovering from the decline in port calls when compared to the developed and some rapidly developing economies of the world due to the region's lack of economic resilience. Thus, since ports have been identified as vulnerable to economic, social, institutional, and environmental shocks, and to dynamic and highly unpredictable demand for port services, policymakers of various nationals in the SSA may need to examine the patterns of performance of vessels in the regions to manage trade flows more effectively as a way of responding to future dynamics in maritime trade in the region.

The road freight industry is essential to Southern African economies, and South Africa, the largest economy and port of entry and exit for the majority of goods coming and going to the region, has a shortage of trained, quality truck drivers. This study investigates the extent to which employers are hiring female drivers in response to this skilled-labour shortage and brings to light the experiences of both employers and female truck drivers in South Africa's road freight industry. Although there is a dearth of literature on the experiences of women in skilled blue-collar work in South Africa, previous studies from the developed world have established certain expectations for the integration of women into traditionally male-dominated fields; the results of this study are discussed in relation to these expectations. Findings suggest that women are increasingly targeted for employment, beyond the requirements of affirmative action legislation, due to the perception that female drivers are safer, more conscientious, less likely to endanger public safety and company property, and less likely to engage in risky forms of behaviour including those associated with exposure to HIV/AIDS. This has led some employers to conclude that the female drivers they employ are not only equal but superior to their male colleagues. While female drivers note challenges in gaining entry and acceptance in the industry, they also report a near-unanimously positive experience with colleagues and supervisors. This study furthers our understanding of changing gender dynamics in South Africa as well as the secondary impacts of HIV/AIDS on southern African countries. The future of female employment in South Africa's road freight industry holds both opportunities and challenges.

Yet, as the scholar and analyst Augustus Vogel, of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., points out, doing so is vitally impor tant to Africa: illegal fishing undercuts Africa's eco nomic development and exacerbates its food secu rity challenges; piracy makes badly needed trade and investment in Africa more risky and expensive; the continent is becoming an increasingly active drug traf ficking hub; the growing drug trade, in turn, is giving international criminal syndicates a foothold within certain African governments, weakening their ability to address other national priorities; and illegal com merce (such as oil bunkering, transport of counterfeit materials, and theft) impacts legitimate businesses and world markets. [...] many of Africa's emerging threats arrive by sea.1 Most glaring has been the lack of a significant contribution by the South African Navy (SAN), arguably sub-Saharan Africa's most capable naval force.

A producer of 5.4 M bbl/d, totalling almost half of the consumption of the entire European Union, the Gulf of Guinea is a fundamental lifeline and maritime link between Europe, the Americas and Africa. Geographically positioned as a staging post for transit originating in Latin America and coupled with its relatively porous borders, the region is also the perfect stepping stone for contraband heading to European shores. While blessed with an enviable wealth of marine and mineral resources, the region is also plagued by an ever-increasing spectre of maritime piracy; accounting for around 30% of incidents in African waters from 2003 to 2011. It is for these reasons that this research centres around the issues of maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea, with a particular focus on the first two decades of the 21st century. This research looks to examine the overall picture of the present state of play in the area, before going on to provide an analysis of potential regional developments in maritime security.This research begins with the analysis of concepts/phenomena that have played a notable role in the shaping of the field of maritime security, namely Globalisation and security issues in the post-Cold War era. The ensuing chapter then focuses in on the Gulf of Guinea and the issues dominating the field of maritime security in the region.The penultimate chapter presents a SWOT analysis, undertaken as part of this research with the aim of correlating opinions from a variety of sectors/professions regarding maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea.The final chapter builds upon the results obtained from the abovementioned SWOT analysis, presenting a series of potential proposals/strategies that can contribute to the field of maritime security in the region over the coming years.This research draws to a close with the presentation of conclusions taken from this particular investigation, as well as a final overview of the earlier presented proposals applicable to the field of maritime security during the second decade of the 21stcentury.

\"The Transit Regime for Landlocked States\" assesses the strengths and limits of existing international law related to the free access of landlocked states to and from the sea. The book analyzes whether the provisions of international law satisfy the economic demands of landlocked states, the majority of which are among the world’s poorest nations. The book reviews the several principles of international law that dominated the evolution of the rights of access. It discusses both general and specific conventions, as well as treaty regimes emanating therefrom, and examines some restrictions imposed by some of those conventions, part of which are challenged by landlocked states. The book briefly comments on the ongoing international initiatives and developments aimed at addressing the theoretical as well as practical problems faced by landlocked states. These developments, which have led to the creation of legal instruments with normative value, underscore the evolutionary nature of international law as well as the perennial efforts associated with its development. Kishor Uprety has a law degree from the Tribhuvan University (Nepal) and a diplôme d’étude supérieure and doctorate from the Sorbonne University (Paris). Currently senior counsel at the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank, Kishor Uprety has published extensively on issues related to international law and development.