MOMBASA: Kenya port operators have eyed Durban Port to boost and heighten their shipping and for the purpose, they will send their employees to South Africa to analyze the Durban port’s capability for becoming the continent’s busiest shipping hub.
The East African nation is taking steps toward co-operation and regional integration in shipping, signing an agreement with Transnet SOC Ltd., said Tau Morwe, chief executive of South Africa’s Transnet National Ports Authority, according to a statement e-mailed today by the Kenya Ports Authority. Some African ports lack deep-water berths and equipment amid limited staff training and capital to develop infrastructure, he said.
Kenya Ports Authority official Justus Nyarandi said “management and junior employees” would be sent to Durban “to see the benchmarks that have been set,” according to the statement.
Mombasa, East Africa’s largest port, is looking to Transnet for support as it seeks a private operator for the first phase of a terminal that’s nearing completion and can handle 550,000 twenty-foot containers, or TEUs, per year, he said.
Durban is South Africa’s busiest port, handling almost 63% of the country’s container traffic, or 3.6 million TEUs, a year.
