Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (Nimasa) director general, Dakuku Peterside, has called on African and Middle Eastern countries to plan mitigation measures against the potential risk of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He said these risks included a trade imbalance in favour of China along with Chinese control of trade infrastructure which would give the Asian country a lot of leverage in the global marketplace. “Chinese policy will affect port calls and hub decisions, which may adversely affect ports of Africa and the Middle East,” said Peterside. “Chinese political influence and dominance leading to the reintroduction of Sino-centric order is imminent, and the tanker market will shrink substantially as pipelines across continents will be the preferred mode of transportation of oil and gas.” However, he said that the benefits from the BRI would effectively outweigh any of the risks. He pointed out that the initiative would open up new markets in global commerce, improve connectivity between modes of transport, enhance speed and efficiency at ports, open new international trade routes and boost technology transfer. Africa House Market Access & Strategy director, Duncan Bonnett, told FTW that if the BRI was successfully implemented, it would fundamentally restructure operations across the continent such as lessening the need for tanker berthing and so on. “As intra-African land connectivity increases, as a result of the BRI, this will disrupt maritime flows,” he said. “In theory, if the BRI is fully implemented, goods could land at Djibouti port and travel via road or rail to the Port of Abidjan.” He also noted that the BRI would have the greatest impact on southern African ports, especially South Africa, as ports in the region could lose out in the form of transhipment which is a large part of the country’s oceans economy, generating muchneeded jobs. But Bonnett says that while this outcome is possible in theory, in reality it will be a long time before the BRI has any meaningful impact on maritime trends. “If you look at the key countries dividing the East and West African coasts you can see that they’re not conducive to multi-billion road and rail investments due to their instability,” he said. “Also, we’ve been seeing a lot of Chinese companies recently acknowledging that they’ve made a lot of expensive mistakes in rolling out infrastructure in Africa which countries were unable to use or operate.” Bonnett pointed out that the BRI would only be one part of the reconfiguration of trade in Africa, with the already growing refining capacity on the continent, and growth in domestic manufacturing capacity. He added that the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement could have a much bigger impact on Africa’s trade than the BRI if it could effectively attract manufacturing investment into Africa.
