Beyond its long beaches and kilometers of windswept coconut palms, the shore of Côte d’Ivoire has two container ports: that of Abidjan, a vibrant economic capital which serves a whole part of the landlocked countries of the Sahel , and that of San Pedro, world leader in the export of cocoa. Since 2022, these two critical infrastructures have been in the hands of a single operator: the Italian-Swiss shipowner MSC. That year, at the end of flash negotiations, the first shipping company in the world swallowed up, for the modest sum of 5.7 billion euros, the very profitable African logistics activities of the Bolloré group. The operation notably enabled MSC, which already operated the port of San Pedro, to recover the two terminals of Abidjan, finding itself in a situation of monopoly on the container in this key country of West Africa.
Same result a little further east of the Gulf of Guinea, in Lomé, Togo, where MSC now operates the two container terminals of this hub which has recently propelled itself to first place in the sub-region.
With this acquisition, the Geneva group changes dimension on the continent. MSC had a total of 8,000 employees in Africa (with its subsidiaries TIL for terminals and Medlog for logistics) when Bolloré Africa Logistics (BAL, now AGL for Africa Global Logistics) had 21,000 employees at the time of the takeover. Abidjan, Lomé… but also Dakar, Freetown, Pointe-Noire (Congo): the group is going from 2 to 18 container terminals, essential to better serve its ships and control its costs. It also recovers one of the first logistics networks on the continent: railways linking in particular Côte d’Ivoire to Burkina Faso − a vital corridor for the Sahel; dozens of dry ports and warehouses − including 70,000 square meters in dry and cold, just for the Ivory Coast.
“War Chest”
Less pompous than the enormous port infrastructures with their immense cranes serving the giants of the seas, the logistics assets are however crucial in the strategy of the shipowners. “There is both a battle for the seafront and for the African hinterland [arrière-pays] »attests a senior executive at one of the major shipowners.
These container specialists want to offer a turnkey service, controlling the entire journey at sea and then on land from a “box”, from, for example, its departure from Amsterdam to its delivery to a customer in Ouagadougou. On the continent as elsewhere, “there is a desire among major shipping companies to vertically integrate the value chain”, confirms a source at AGL, noting that these behemoths have money to invest, having constituted “ a war chest ” during the Covid pandemic, when the price of freight had exploded. In this context, according to the same source, the sale of the French company appeared to be a godsend.
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