Since becoming the leading container port in the region since 2017, Lagos has been ranked first. Lomé owes its rank to some investments made in recent years by the Bolloré Group and Lomé Container Terminal (LCT). And in the medium term, Togo does not intend to stop there.
In a competitive climate between West African ports, that of Lomé, presented as the only deepwater in the region did not put an end to its ambitions for modernization. Indeed, in its National Development Plan (PND) which covers the period 2018 – 2022, the Togolese government plans to launch “a profound transformation of the Port”.
Concretely, he explains in the document, this ambition will be realized through several strategic objectives: to make it the most efficient port of the sub-region by optimizing its operations, to reinforce its role as transhipment port of the sub-region. region and primary source of supply for the hinterland and neighboring countries by improving connectivity and preparing it for sound and sustainable growth by improving the efficiency of its management.
Lomé indicates that this reform aims to reduce the average time of passage to the port of Lomé from 72 hours in 2016 to 24 hours in 2022 and increase the volume of containers handled (in TEU) from 1,193,841 in 2017 to 3,050,000 in 2022, in order to increase the revenues generated by the port activity, and to have an effect on the freight transport economy in West Africa.
“Achieving this effect will be achieved by increasing the traffic of the port of Lome, diversifying and increasing the reception and logistics infrastructure of the port of Lome and the creation and operationalization of the port authority” , says the strategic document.
As a reminder, the Autonomous Port of Lomé (PAL) has recently been the subject of several modernization works that have considerably increased traffic. Next to the French group Bolloré which has invested 300 billion CFA francs (457 million euros) to build a third wharf – with a basin 15 meters deep, 450 meters long, bringing the total length of the wharves to 920 meters, it is Lomé Container Terminal (LCT), owned in equal shares by Global Terminal Limited and China Merchants Holdings which has paid 324 million euros for its transhipment terminal.
And the port activity has since increased. From 252 000 tonnes of goods per year to its creation, the PAL registered, in 2015, a traffic of more than 15 million tons of goods with a service of 1 399 ships and a transit traffic of more than 2.6 million tons. In 2017, 1,375 vessels landed and nearly 20 million tonnes were treated, representing a 38% increase over the previous year.
In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the increase in port traffic to 25% between January and June 2018.
In the beginning was a slight German wharf
The history of the Port of Lome goes back to the colonial years of Togo: in fact, the Germans were the first to have apprehended the strategic and economic importance of the small opening that the country has on the sea. In 1890, they had built the very first wooden wharf on metal piles. But the infrastructure will be ravaged by a fire, and will leave room for another larger with a metal framework resting on concrete piles.
The new wharf will be washed away in 1911 by a tidal wave. Similarly, the one set up in 1912 will be damaged by a storm. Built in 1928, the port infrastructure of the French no longer responded a few years later to the flow of transactions despite its strengthening. The Togolese authorities are therefore initiating the construction of a modern port in 1959.
This is how independent Togo signs a technical agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany for the realization of this dream. Thus, the Port of Lomé was inaugurated on April 26, 1968, but the date of January 21, 1967 remained in the annals as the one marking the arrival of the very first ship at berth, the “Brite Hugo Stinnes”.
