1.2 Million TEU to/from Africa

It is now day 11 of the voyage and I have entered France after visiting Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. The image is taken as I was approaching Antwerp port.

In total these 4 countries are importing and exporting a total of 1.2 million TEU related to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) seen over the past 12 months. That equals more than 3300 TEU every day of the year.

But the 4 countries clearly have very different relations with the SSA nations. For the combined imports, Netherlands accounts for 53% at the high end whereas France only accounts for 11% at the low end.

If we look at exports, the distribution changes completely to be almost even across the 4 countries with France at the high end at 28% and Germany at the low end at 23%.

All 4 countries are hosts to some of Europe’s largest and busiest ports such as Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre and Fos. From this perspective it is natural that a large share of the SSA cargo pass through these ports.

If we look at the totality of container trade between Europe and SSA, the four countries account for 43% of the imports into Europe and 34% of the exports from Europe to Africa.

Of course, if you place this into the context of the total European imports and exports, the SSA trade becomes relatively smaller.

Out of the total imports into these 4 countries, only 3.8% comes from SSA. But on the export side this is very different as 9.3% of the containerized exports go to SSA.

These 4 well-connected North European countries are therefore an important backbone in Europe’s containerized trade with SSA.

Thank you to Container Trade Statistics for providing the demand data

The movie shows the bridge over the mouth of the river Seine close to the Le Havre port.