Transport Infrastructure Deficits and Their Implications On AFCFTA Cross-Border Logistics in West Africa (Published)
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) gives Africa’s 55 economies the chance to come together and form a single market worth over $3.4 trillion. But its effectiveness depends a lot on how good the transportation and logistics infrastructures are, especially in West Africa, where trade across borders is limited by ongoing shortages. This paper examines the effects of deficiencies in transport infrastructure on the implementation of the AfCFTA, utilizing secondary data from UNCTAD, AfDB, UNECA, ECOWAS, and the World Bank covering the period from 2018 to 2024. A quantitative methodology was utilized to examine parameters like logistics performance scores, freight prices, customs clearing durations, corridor transit efficiency, and intra-African trade volumes. The results show that intra-African trade grew from 15% to 22.3%, but the continent is still behind Asia (61%) and Europe (67%). This is mostly because of bad road and rail connections, port congestion, and inefficiencies in institutions. Targeted investments and coordinated policies can make a big difference in certain areas, as the Abidjan–Lagos and Northern corridors. The report finds that AfCFTA will only be able to drive regional integration and sustainable growth if it closes infrastructure gaps, encourages the use of digital logistics, and improves governance.
Keywords: Maritime Industry., Nigerian ports, fatigue, occupational health and safety, safety systems
The Impacts of Cabotage Law Implementation on Nigeria’s Indigenous Shipping Industry: A Study of the Onne Sea Port, Rivers State, Nigeria (Published)
This study examined the level of indigenous participation in shipping-related businesses in Onne Sea Port, Port Harcourt, owing to the implementation of the Cabotage Law. A Principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted on 67 items from 450 questionnaires administered with a success rate of 89.3 using orthogonal rotation. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure verified the sampling adequacy for the analysis, KMO = .771, and all KMO values for individual items were greater than .51, which is slightly above the acceptable limit of .5. Bartlett’s test of sphericity χ² (2211) = 2.480, p < .001, indicated that correlations between items were sufficiently large for PCA. An initial analysis was carried out to obtain eigenvalues for each component in the data. Seventeen components had eigenvalues over Kaiser’s criterion of 1 and in combination explained 75.65 per cent of the variance. Various levels of impact of the Cabotage law on SMEs and indigenous ship building technology has been examined. Multiple regression analysis confirmed that Cabotage regime has significant impact on the number of indigenous vessels through a combined effect of six variables (R² = 0.05, F(6, 395) = 4.501, p < .005). The study recommended human capital development as a vital and indispensable element of Cabotage Law implementation in Nigeria.
Keywords: Cabotage Law, Capacity building, Indigenous Participation, Maritime Industry., Shipping Industry