Chart of the week: Comparison of shipping costs
4th March 2020

SBM tracked shipments over a period of three months to three ports in Africa, and came up with this average costs of first, shipping goods in from the EU, the terminal charges that containers pay while they are in those ports, and the average cost of local transportation from the port to selected warehouses within the port cities. The costs for the Apapa Port in Lagos are by far the highest, five times higher than in Durban, South Africa, and three times higher than in Tema, Ghana. While each of the component parts of this dataset, shipping charges, terminal charges and local transport, are highest for Lagos, it is local transport, 10 times the cost in Lagos than in both Durban and Tema, that really makes Lagos an expensive place to do business in.