- Africa Risks Digitising Port Inefficiency Instead of Fixing It — World Bank
Africa’s ports risk spending heavily on digital technology only to reproduce the paperwork, institutional rivalry and administrative delays that modernisation is supposed to eliminate, the World Bank has warned.
Satya Prasad Sahu, Senior Trade Facilitation Specialist at the World Bank, said fragmented infrastructure and weak coordination were preventing customs authorities, shipping lines, immigration services and port operators from functioning as parts of one connected trading system.
His warning shifts the maritime digitalisation debate away from the number of platforms procured and towards a more difficult question: whether governments are prepared to redesign processes, clarify institutional authority and require agencies to exchange information.
Speaking at the Regional Workshop on Maritime Single Windows, Mr Sahu said African ports increasingly operate digital applications, yet businesses are still frequently required to submit the same information through multiple channels.
“In many ports, we have digitalized individual processes, but we are not necessarily connecting them. And as a result, we don’t have a connected system of processes and data,” he said.
Converting a paper form into an electronic form may make submission faster, but it does not constitute transformation if another agency requests the same data, applies a separate standard or refuses to recognise an approval issued elsewhere.
The result is a port that appears modern from the outside while retaining the operational logic of the paper era. Traders confront several logins instead of several desks, electronic duplication instead of physical duplication and digital queues instead of manual ones.
“Ports are no longer physical gateways. They are also digital gateways,” Mr Sahu said.
For Ghana and other trade-dependent African economies, the quality of those gateways affects far more than port administration. Delayed cargo raises storage and demurrage costs, interrupts production schedules, weakens exporters and makes supply chains less reliable.
Maritime inefficiency can consequently operate like an invisible tax. It may not appear in a tariff schedule, but it increases the final cost of imported machinery, industrial inputs, food and consumer goods while reducing the competitiveness of exports.
A Maritime Single Window coordinates regulatory information connected with a vessel’s arrival, stay and departure, while a Port Community System links the wider logistics community, including terminal operators, freight forwarders, shipping agents and cargo owners.
Treating them as competing technology projects risks creating new institutional boundaries precisely when the objective should be to remove existing ones.
“So we should think about these projects not just as IT projects, but projects that help implement the efficiency goals of the various organizations that are part of the port community,” Mr Sahu said.
“These systems are about people, about processes, about institutions, and above all, it is about collaboration.”
This is where Africa’s implementation challenge becomes political. Agreeing who controls a shared platform, owns particular data, sets technical standards and bears responsibility when the system fails is much harder.
“It is relatively easy to procure hardware and software systems,” Mr Sahu observed.
Without clear answers, technology can deepen fragmentation. Each institution may defend its own database, procurement contract and statutory mandate. Public money is then used to finance several platforms that cannot communicate, requiring businesses to bridge the gaps at their own expense.
Such an outcome would be especially damaging where projects are financed through government budgets, development assistance or private concessions. The country carries the capital and maintenance costs without securing the intended gains in clearance time, transparency or revenue administration.
The appropriate sequence, according to Mr Sahu’s argument, begins with assessing business processes. Authorities must identify duplicated requirements, determine which agency genuinely needs each item of information and decide whether data supplied once can legally be reused by authorised institutions.
That must be followed by enabling legislation, defined accountability and meaningful private-sector participation. Shipping lines, freight forwarders, terminal operators and cargo owners experience the system directly; excluding them from design can produce platforms that satisfy procurement specifications but fail operational users.
West African countries do not have to purchase identical software, but their systems must understand one another and exchange information securely.
“We do not necessarily need every country and every port to use the same system,” Mr Sahu explained. “We do need systems that can understand one another and exchange information securely using internationally recognized standards, such as the IMO Compendium or the World Customs Organization Data Model.”
This principle matters for the African Continental Free Trade Area. AfCFTA cannot achieve its potential through lower tariffs alone if cargo continues to encounter incompatible data requirements, repeated submissions and unpredictable clearance procedures between national jurisdictions.
Interoperable systems could improve cargo visibility from the port into customs, inland logistics networks and cross-border corridors. They could also reduce documentation, support risk-based controls and give traders more predictable information about the movement of their goods.
Governments need compatible laws, reliable cybersecurity, agreed messaging standards and mechanisms for resolving errors or disputes. Greater connectivity without adequate protection could spread operational disruption and expose sensitive commercial information.
The workshop, themed “Increasing the Use of the IMO Compendium, Maritime Single Windows and Port Community Systems,” gives maritime authorities, development partners and industry representatives an opportunity to compare successful reforms with implementation failures.
But workshops will matter only if their lessons alter procurement choices, institutional mandates and the daily experience of port users.
Governments should therefore measure digitalisation through outcomes: fewer duplicate submissions, shorter vessel and cargo clearance times, lower compliance costs, improved system availability and greater predictability. Counting platforms or electronic forms says little about whether trade has become easier.
Mr Sahu captured that test directly: “Digital transformation is not achieved when we introduce a new system. It is achieved when institutions, processes and systems begin to work together differently.”
That is ultimately the warning for African policymakers. The continent does not principally suffer from a shortage of digital ambition. It suffers from institutions that too often modernise separately.
Unless coordination, governance and process reform catch up with technological investment, Africa may build increasingly sophisticated ports whose systems remain disconnected. The screens will change, but the delays, costs and frustrations facing traders will survive behind them.
