It is East Africa’s first port, but its development is being challenged by a series of rival projects in Berbera and Djibouti to the north, and Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo to the south. Almost everywhere, the Emirati company DP World controls the traffic.

By far, the port of Mombasa which was built before Portuguese explorers arrived in the region and was known as “the city of merchants”, is the largest on the eastern coast of Africa. In 2023, the total volume of cargo discharged and loaded at the port reached 35.96 million tonnes. It also handled 1.62 million TEU of containers representing 61 percent of its total capacity of 2.65 million TEU. The state-owned Kenyan Port Authority (KPA) which manages the port expects the traffic of Mombasa to increase up to 47 million tonnes by 2025.
The wider Mombasa port complex now managed by the Danish company AP Moller Maersk, comprises 19 berths, a grain terminal, 2 oil terminals, 6 container berths and 12 berths that handle general cargo. It includes the Kilindini Harbour , the Mbaraki wharf operated by the Bamburi Cement company and the Mbaraki Bulk Terminal that deals with petroleum products. The port also hosts the biggest grain handling facility in Africa. Leading exports include avocado, coffee, tea, vegetables, cashew nuts, fish fillets, and other foodstuffs and beverages.

Port of Mombasa. Cargo operations in the container terminal. Shutterstock/ Ungureanu Catalina Oana.

Transit cargo accounts for about 20 percent of the total volume of traffic since Mombasa is the main outlet for Uganda which accounts for 61 percent of the transit traffic as against 17 percent for South Sudan and four percent for Rwanda. It is also the main outlet for the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo which account for 14 percent of the transit volume. According to the KPA, cargo destined for Burundi through Mombasa more than doubled in the first six months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Such traffic is facilitated by railway connections to Uganda and Tanzania and road connections to South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi.
According to KPA’s Managing Director William Ruto, the improved performance is owed to increased efficiency in operations including the expansion of container handling berths, increased automation of services, acquisition of modern ship and cargo handling equipment. The container vessel turnaround time has improved indeed from an average of three days in 2022 to two days in 2023, reducing the dwell time for containers to three days, from four days.
Yet, the port of Mombasa risks to lose its regional leadership. Kenya’s neighbours are indeed expanding and modernising their port infrastructures. Mombasa’s position is under threat namely because of the ascendance of political considerations over economic interests, claim maritime business sources.
In 2015, the KPA and DP World were encouraged by the Kenyan government to set up a partnership but docker unions who feared job cuts and privatisation opposed to the move.
In a report published in 2022, the London-based African-led Advisory services firm GBS warned that the dominance of Mombasa is being challenged by other regional facilities that are less resistant to badly needed reform. Maritime consultants warn indeed about the “shrinking capacity” at the Mombasa Port which is suffering from congestion, delays, mismanagement and frequent industrial action, accordingly. Kenyan ports have been facing increasing pressure due to rising cargo volume and limited capacity which led to delays in cargo handling and increased costs for shipping companies.

Kilindini Harbour, Mombasa. Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0/Andrew Thomas

Contrasting with William Ruto’s optimistic perspective, a report over the best performing container harbours, published in 2022 by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence, lists in that order Djibouti, Berbera in Somaliland, Mogadishu and Dar Es Salaam as more performing than Mombasa. One symptom of the congestion problems in the Kenyan port is the 20 percent decrease to 2.3 million tonnes of the volume of transshipment cargo destined for other ports.
“Africa’s Ports: Fast-tracking Transformation” report lists Mombasa, along with Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Cape Town, South Africa, as facilities with short-term infrastructure deficits. The report, compiled by the Africa CEO Forum and Okan, a strategy and financial advisory firm, says that without investment, the situation risks worsening in the face of growing demand. Globally, shipowners are looking to maximise profits by carrying more cargo on fewer but larger ships, which can reach 20,000 TEU capacity. Ports are increasingly challenged to provide space to accommodate these monsters.
Dar es Salaam Port is undertaking infrastructural and institutional reforms which may threaten Kenya’s position as a regional hub if plans to build six berths there and in Bagamoyo with public-private partnership financing go ahead. The US$ 421 million Dar es Salaam Maritime Gateway Project (DMGP) is being implemented since 2017 to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Dar es Salaam Port. The project, co-financed by the Tanzanian government, the World Bank and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, involves the reconstruction and deepening of seven berths to 14.5 metres in order to enable the port to handle large vessels.

Container terminal in port of Mombasa. 123rf

In October 2023, the Dubai-based global port operator DP World signed a 30-year concession agreement with the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) to operate and modernise the Dar es Salaam Port, connecting it to the hinterland through a network of roads, highways, railways, and dedicated freight corridors. This modernisation includes investments in cold storage facilities to enhance the agricultural sector,
According to the Shippers Council of Eastern Africa (SCEA), the lobby representing importers and exporters of goods, Ugandan and Rwandan companies are gradually increasing volumes through Dar Es Salaam via the central corridor of only 1,300 km through Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Eastern DRC. Dar es Salaam is becoming a regional transshipment hub for tea, coffee, tobacco, oilseeds, cotton, sisal, cashew nuts and copper although it also faces congestion problems. The average waiting period for a ship to offload cargo is five days there. By end 2023, the KPA reported that some ships destined for Tanzania were being diverted to Mombasa.

A beautiful view from a boat of the waving sea and the green coastline in Lamu. The Lamu Port is meant to replace Mombasa’s Kilindini harbour as Kenya’s largest port facility.123rf

Despite the competition, cargo volumes at Mombasa and Dar es Salaam ports have kept growing. In January 2024, Tanzania announced the completion of the DMGP and plans to expand its maritime infrastructure as it opened storage for cargo destined to four East African Community (EAC) states. According to its director Mrisho S. Mrisho, the Port of Dar es Salaam intends to handle 24 million tonnes of cargo in 2023/2024 fiscal year. Besides, the Tanzanian authorities have allowed the China Merchant Holding to develop a 20 million TEU container capacity at the port of Bagamoyo which will be the largest of Eastern Africa. Another regional competitor for Mombasa is the port of Djibouti which has undertaken extensive developments, increasing efficiency at its Doraleh Terminal which is the main outlet for the Djibouti International Free Trade Zone opened in July 2018.
Meanwhile, Kenya has also developed its own domestic alternative. In 2014, the KPA agreed with the China Communication Construction Company for the construction of three berths in the Port of Lamu that forms part of the Lamu Corridor linking it to Sudan and Ethiopia. The idea of Lamu as an alternative to Mombasa emerged in 1975. In 2012, the late President Mwai Kibaki, the then Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir laid the foundation of the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET). When completed, the Lamu Port is meant to replace Mombasa’s Kilindini harbour as Kenya’s largest port facility. It would comprise a railway terminal, storage tanks, container freight stations and oil pipeline, oil refineries and several airports. But this project has been stalled owing to regional security concerns on the border with Somalia and political instability in Kenya. Indeed, the corridor should comprise the Lamu-Ethiopia-South Sudan highway, the Lamu-Juba-Addis Ababa railway and a 2,240km pipeline linking oil fields in South Sudan to a new oil refinery at Lamu Port. But the Uhuru Kenyatta administration failed to allocate sufficient resources to the project, with only three berths completed in eight years and the port is currently underutilised because of lack of infrastructure to link it to Ethiopia and South Sudan. DP World aims to operate the three berths in Lamu and create a special economic zone, focused on agricultural activity and servicing the Lamu corridor.

Liquefied cargo carrier in port of Mombasa. 123rf

Yet, the economic viability of the Lamu port is threatened by a recent development. Indeed, Ethiopia, its key target, has turned its focus on the port of Berbera in the non-recognised state of Somaliland, which is set to become the most modern port in the Horn of Africa once completed. Berbera operated by DP World is indeed the closest sea outlet for Ethiopia, an 11-hour journey by road. In May 2016 the Government of Somaliland signed a 30-year agreement with DP World to develop and manage Berbera Port at a cost of $442 million. Recently the DP World Group say that the port, which can currently handle 500,000 will expand into handling one million TEU and up to 2 million TEU at a later stage. According to GBS, Berbera is “the most exciting seaport facility in the region” while the World Bank forecasts that the volumes of cargo handled in Berbera will increase from 3 million to 18 million tonnes between 2016 and 2050. Nevertheless, the KPA keeps defending Mombasa’s leadership. It has expanded the new container terminal of the Port of Mombasa to include two new berths with plans to proceed with a third one. The KPA managing director also announced in early 2024 the dredging of the port channel to accommodate bigger vessels. The KPA’s list of projects includes beside the new Kipevu Oil Terminal - an offshore island facility at the Port of Mombasa that was completed in January 2022 - the third phase of the second container which will increase its capacity by 400,000 TEU which will be funded by the Japanese International Corporation Agency (JICA). At Mombasa Port, DP World has been allocated four berths and turn them into a modern terminal capable of handling one million TEU, remaining thus the main regional player. (Open Photo: Container and tanker vessels in port of Mombasa. Shutterstock/ Druid007)
François Misser

As Africa’s largest port, Durban faces many challenges that are hampering its development. These include congestion, lack of reform and competition from other regional ports.

Managed in a landlord capacity by the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA), the port of Durban is the largest in Africa. It has strong maritime connections with the rest of the world and a unique geographical location on one of the world’s busiest international routes between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. During the fiscal year 2023/2024 , the volume targets were 81.4 million tons for the bulk cargo and  826,033 automotive units. The port also hosts facilities for the fishing industry, shipyards, cruise liner vessels and recreational boating.
Durban is also the second main container port of Africa after Tangier-Med in Morocco, with a target of 4.2 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent units (TEU) in 2023/2024.
Established in July 1977, the Durban Container Terminal operates as two terminals Pier 1 and Pier 2, handling 65% of South Africa’s (SA) container volumes.Yet, the port of Durban is facing a number of serious challenges which threaten its development and efficiency. The most important is the congestion of the harbour.
According to UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport in 2020, the median stay in South African ports was 3.32 days in average as against in 2.02 neighbouring Mozambique and 1.05 in Namibia.  The World Bank’s 2022 Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) ranked Mozambique’s Beira Port (a private joint-venture between Mozambique Ports and Railways and Rotterdam-based Cornelder Holdings) as the most efficient in Southern Africa.

Aerial view of the Durban container port. CC BY-SA 2.0/ Media Club – IMC-KZN-00074G

Durban ranked 341 out of 348 global ports. In Southern Africa, Beira (Mozambique) ranked much higher (223) followed by Maputo (Mozambique), Port Elizabeth (South Africa), Walvis Bay (Namibia), Luanda (Angola) and Ngqura (South Africa).
One of the main problems is outdated and insufficient port equipment which according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), means that despite its dominant position in Africa, the performance of Durban is sub-optimal. The port is one of the most expensive in the world, basically due to high cargo dues.
A World Bank report published in May 2021, ranked the Ports of Cape Town, Ngqura and Durban as among the worst ports in the world in operational efficiency. Moreover, a worrying aspect, underlined by the report SA-TIED (South Africa-Towards inclusive economic development) published in 2021 with the support of the United Nations, the European Union, the South African government and local and international research institutes, is that the average terminal efficiency of South African container ports has decreased from 76 to 66% between 2010 and 2019 while regional and global peers increased from 67% to 88%. Weather conditions may also worsen the situation. In January 2024, 100 km-an-hour winds have indeed interrupted container operations across the Durban, Cape Town, Ngqura and Port Elizabeth container terminals during two weeks, with 63 vessels kept waiting before Durban. In addition, the landlord authority, the TNPA has done little to stimulate competition between its ports.

The port of Durban is facing a number of serious challenges. The most important is the congestion of the harbour. Courtesy Transnet Port Terminals

Durban and the other South African ports are also increasingly facing the competition of other regional ports and corridors. One of them is Walvis Bay, in Namibia, which competes with Lobito (Angola) and the South African ports for the evacuation of products from the landlocked countries and regions of Southern Angola, Katanga, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana as well as the Northern Cape province in South Africa. By 2025, it is planned that 2 million tons will be evacuated through the Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi Development Corridor, 9 million more through the Trans-Kalahari Corridor from Angola, Botswana, and South Africa and 6 million through the Trans Orange corridor from South Africa.
The container capacity at Walvis Bay is being expanded from 350,000 TEU to 850,000 TEUs in 2025 and to 2.2 mil in 2045. It will enable it to become the first port of large container ships on the West Coast in the southern hemisphere. Due to a favourable business environment, the time required for customs clearance is shorter there (2 days) than in South Africa (5 days). Yet, Durban still retains a comparative advantage. The leasing price of land for warehouse is cheaper than in Walvis Bay.
The Angola port of Lobito is another potential competitor. Indeed, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia are trying to revive the Lobito corridor with a support from the United States and the European Union which considers that connecting the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt with the Atlantic is a geopolitical move in their race against China which dominates the strategic supply chains for the energy transition. One of the advantages for mining houses in both the DRC and Zambia is that the distance between the mining capital of Kolwezi (DRC) to Lobito is only 1,600 km or half the distance to Durban.

Durban and the other South African ports are also increasingly facing the competition of other regional ports and corridors. Courtesy: Transnet Port Terminals

The Lobito corridor has a railway line which was entirely rehabilitated in 2019 by a subsidiary of the China Railway Construction corporation until the Congolese border. In July 2023, the DR Congo and Angola officially granted a 30-year concession to the Lobito Atlantic Railways consortium to operate, manage and maintain the line, between Lobito and the DRC’s Copperbelt. This consortium, led by Singapore-based commodity trader Trafigura, which includes Portuguese construction firm, Mota-Engil and Belgian railway operator Vecturis, will invest up to US$555 million in the project.The promotors are banking on the booming demand for critical minerals necessary for the world’s transition to clean energy to attract investment in the region since the International Energy Agency projects that demand for rare earth metals – primarily for electric vehicle motors and wind turbines  – will grow by three-to-seven-fold by 2040. Likewise, according to IEA, the demand for copper will increase by 40%, nickel and cobalt by 60-70% and lithium by almost 90%.Trafigura says the Lobito Corridor will offer the DRC and Angola the fastest export route
to Europe and the Americas.
So far, the DR Congo has been relying on three routes for its exports of metals and minerals: to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Beira (Mozambique) and Durban. But all are congested. The US International Development Finance (DFC) has conducted due diligence for a potential financing package of U$ 250 million for the project announced by President Joe Biden at the May 2023 G7 meeting in Japan. Yet, there is a bottleneck on the Lobito corridor: indeed, 400 km of railway to the mining town of Kolwezi on the Congolese side badly need to be rehabilitated and by early 2024, the investment had still to be secured.

One of the main problems of the Durban Port is outdated and insufficient port equipment. Courtesy: Transnet Port Terminals.

In order to face all these challenges including the competition of other regional harbours, and the address the country’s ports operation problems, the South African government decided in 2021 to create a clear separation between the roles of the infrastructure owner, which is the Transnet National Ports Authority, and the terminal operator, which is Transnet Port Terminals. The purpose was that the functional and legal separation of these roles, which were operating divisions of the same company, would enable each to be fulfilled more independently and with greater efficiency. Among other projects for the ten coming years, the Ports Authority decided to deepen the entrance channel of Durban harbour and widen it from 122 to 230 meters. In January 2024, the TNPA announced plans to privatise several aspects of South Africa’s port operations. To this end, it hired a team of contractors to run the eight terminals that lack operators.
The TNPA hopes that this arrangement, which will last for three years, will smooth the transition to new long-term operators for the terminals. Yet, the reform is a delicate one since powerful dockers unions which fear job losses are hostile to such privatisation.

Durban is the most advanced and largest port in Africa.Courtesy: Transnet Port Terminals

These port improvements announced by the TNPA come at a time when large numbers of ships are being routed around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid hostilities in the Red Sea where Houthi militants in Yemen are targeting Israeli-linked vessels in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. By the 24 December 2023, 125 ships had been diverted from the Suez Canal around Cape Town. But the congestion problems of South African ports mean that shipping companies face difficult choices over where to refuel and restock, analysts say.
Durban is the most advanced and largest port in Africa, so ships rerouting around the continent have not many choices for berthing for replenishment, despite its congestion says a logistics consultant. But when they can, vessels routed around the Cape which need for bunkering in route, are trying to do so either in Walvis Bay or in Port Louis (Mauritius) depriving Durban and other South African ports from business opportunities, say shipping line companies sources. (Open Photo: Harbour of Durban. CC BY-SA 3.0/ below)

F.M.

The Lagos complex, with the new Lekki container port and the neighbouring Tin Can Island port, is the largest maritime hub in the Gulf of Guinea. But Nigeria’s ports face many challenges, including congestion, corruption and piracy.

With an annual cargo volume of 27 million tonnes, the Port of Lagos is the second largest seaport in West Africa. The original Apapa Port, opened in 1913 and located on the Bay of Benin, remains the country’s oldest and largest in terms of both land area and cargo handled, with a total area of 80 hectares.
It has five private terminals operated by AP Moller, ENL Consortium Limited, Apapa Bulk Terminal, Greenview Development Nigeria Ltd and Lilypond Inland Terminal. These facilities handle cereals, grains, machinery, construction material, vehicles, food, minerals, fertilisers and industrial raw materials. The port also houses a crude oil and petroleum terminal beside four fishing wharves. In addition, it also boasts from a container capacity of 1,000,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU).

Port of Lagos. It has five private terminals. Photo: Nigeria Ports Authority

In 1975, a second port was established at some 7 km from the centre of Lagos to the West of Apapa to cope with growing congestion problems. The Tin Can Island port handled in 2021 a cargo volume of 1.6 million tons including liquid bulk, dry cargo, roll on roll off and breakbulk on its 12 berths capable of accommodating 260 meters long vessels.
The port is also boasting from a container terminal managed by a consortium made of the China Merchants Holding International, the China Africa Development Fund and the Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company which was designed to handle 650,000 TEU annually.
Nigerian ports handle 2/3 of imports, mainly industrial equipment, refined petroleum, chemicals and food, and 1/3 of exports, mainly crude oil. Over the last five years, Nigerian ports handled an average of 77.6 million tonnes per year. However, data from the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) shows that in 2023, traffic volume was below this level at only 70.48 million tonnes, while container traffic was 1.57 million TEUs, down from 1.68 million TEUs in 2022. There is a lot of room for improvement in the profitability of container terminals: on average, about 80% of the total export container traffic is empty. On the other hand, the average turnaround time of vessels will be four days in 2023, compared to 5.2 days in the previous year, due to the positive impact of the new Lekki Deep Seaport, located 65 km south-west of Lagos, which will achieve an average turnaround time of only one day.

Ships berthed at the Apapa wharf in Lagos. Shutterstock/Alucardion

According to Nicolas Sartini, the executive vice-president of the ports and terminals of the French-based CMA CGM Group which holds the sub-concession of the Lekki container port which was built in the Lagos Free Zone, this new infrastructure can accommodate vessels of a 18,000 TEU capacity and should be a game changer in West Africa. But under one condition: accordingly, it is necessary to improve the access roads to the port and the future industries including a cement factory scheduled to be built around the port. The new port which started its operations in 2023, is a partnership between the China Harbour Engineering Company which obtained the wider port concession for 45 years and has built the port, the Tolaram Group from Singapore, the State of Lagos and the Nigerian Port Authority.
The total investment of $ 1.65 million includes the construction of 50 hectares area with two container berths and a total annual capacity of 1.2 million TEU. Upon completion of the final phase, the port will reach a total capacity of 2.7 million TEU, larger than that of the port of Abidjan, just after the Ghanaian port of Tema which should reach a capacity of 3.5 million TEU by 2025.

Maersk Line arrives as MV Leto Monrovia leaves the port of Lagos. Shutterstock/ Dumbra

With the construction of the Lekki Deep Seaport, the NPA expects to improve the port efficiency and cost-effective port operations and to reduce the delays in the import of raw materials and equipment. To that effect, the CEO of the NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko has made plans for advancing automation and digitalization.
The NPA also hopes to capitalize on the African Continental Free Trade Area agreements to develop the port activities.
Yet, a number of challenges must be addressed. One of the most important is the congestion at the Port of Lagos which explains why a significant portion of the cargo destinated to Lagos or originating from there transits through Cotonou (Benin) and Lomé (Togo). Lagos depends also sizeably from the collaboration with the ports of Abidjan, Tanger and Tema. Lomé is a serious competitor with a volume of cargo of 22.6 million tonnes and a container capacity potential of 1.5 m TEU in 2019. It is estimated that inefficient service delivery and gridlock have made Nigeria lose a total of 56 million tons of cargo to Togo, Benin, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana between 2016 and 2020. The Danish consultant Dynamar estimates that the port of Lagos is losing $ 55 million per day because of the congestion.
According to the European Journal of Maritime Research, in November 2022, the Nigerian ports had the highest cargo dwell time in West Africa, being 475% times higher than the global average of 4 days, 64% higher than that of Cotonou, 53% higher than that of Tema and 156% higher than that of Lome. The average dwell time in Nigeria was 23 days in 2017 against 9 days for Cotonou, 14 days for Lome and 15 days for Tema. Accordingly, the transactional dwell time (spent in formalities with customs authorities) accounted for 73% of the total cargo dwell time. Nigeria ranked 110th on a list of 160 countries established by the World Bank in 2018, in terms of port logistics.

View of Lagos. Due to the large urban population and port traffic volumes, Lagos is classified as a Medium-Port Megacity. File swm

According to the French strategy consultant OKAN Partners, port logistics has improved since the average time spent by a ship at berth is now lower than two days in Nigeria like in Ghana or Togo. But the immobilization of containers in Apapa is still too long (22 days as against 12 days for Douala and Luanda).
According to the Manager of Lagos Port Complex  Apapa, Charles Okaga, many challenges still hamper its efficiency, including the manual examination of cargoes by customs due to lack of scanners and the poor access roads. Beside logistical challenges, the efficiency of the port is also negatively affected by fraudulent customs practices.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, which is mainly perpetrated by Nigerian gangs remains challenging. Pirates are often well armed and violent. They attack and hijack ships and kidnap crews along or far from the coast in rivers, anchorages, ports and surrounding waters. Generally, all waters in off Nigeria remain highly risky, reports the International Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce. Vessels are advised to be vigilant as many incidents go unreported. Kidnapping for ransom remains the biggest risk for crews. In 2023 alone, 23 incidents were reported in the Gulf including one hijacking, seven kidnappings, one combination of both and firing upon vessels on four occasions. There were also 10 boardings , according to the US Office of Naval Intelligence January 2024 report. Incidents occurred in Angola, Togo and Ivory Coast rather than in Nigeria itself. Clearly, after a significant decline in 2021 and 2022 piracy was on the rise again last year.
The relative progress was owed to Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project, launched by President Muhammadu Buhari in June 2021 with the creation of  “The Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency’ (NIMASA) which  allowed a combination of Nigeria’s navy, army, air force, and police to cooperate to counter piracy.

Barbed wire or razor wire attached to the ship hull, superstructure and railings to protect the crew against piracy attack passing Gulf of Guinea. Shutterstock/ Luciavonu

Another reason for the drop in piracy was the decision in 2022 by the Nigerian government to hire one of the most important gang bosses, the former rebel leader turned strong-man, Tompolo believed to be in control of Nigeria’s strongest militia/criminal network responsible for a majority of the pirate activity in the Gulf. Indeed, on that year, following a period of unprecedented pirate activity and industrial scale theft from oil pipelines, the Nigerian authorities awarded a pipeline security contract worth about $ 200 million per year to Tompolo, adapting the proverb that the best rangers are former poachers. The involvement in 2021 and 2022 of several Western navies from United States, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Italy France and the UK had a deterrent effect: in 2021 and 2022, attack numbers were significantly lower than preceding years. But these foreign navies often lack the legal instruments to arrest pirates. (Ship with oil rig in the background in the Nigerian capitol Lagos. Shutterstock/vanhurck)
F.M.