The strategic nature of the port of Beira

The city is still very underdeveloped and run-down, but has a population of 1 million and the port itself has no relation to the city – it is a large, bustling complex with hundreds of long-distance trucks queuing and loading and unloading freight. It looks nothing like the port I visited in early 1987.

Mozambique became independent in 1975 after the fall of the Portuguese government in Lisbon and the decision to withdraw from Africa. The Portuguese people of Mozambique and Angola packed up and left the countries, taking with them everything they could salvage. They left behind a complete mess, a handful of local graduates, a dilapidated infrastructure and a civil war between the Rhodesian and South African-backed Renamo and Frelimo, and the new government led by Samora Machel and backed by Russia.

The port of Beira was involved in all this. It had a long history of relations with the interior. In the late 19th century, the Rhodesians tried to take over by force but almost succeeded, only to be told by the British government that they had to leave. When Rhodesia established itself as a Dominion state in the Empire and Commonwealth, one of the first actions taken was to build a railway line to Beira, realizing that this was the shortest route to the sea. Beira became the main port of entry and exit for the new states in the interior. This was reinforced by the construction of a railway to the Congolese copper belt in the north.

In 1965 the Rhodesians attempted to sever their ties with Britain and in 1966 the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Rhodesia and Britain imposed a naval blockade of the port. For the next 15 years the port remained closed in the north, where most of its cargo came from. Afterwards, the civil war effectively kept the border with Rhodesia closed for another decade.

I was CEO of a large company in Zimbabwe, and we exported products to many parts of Africa and Europe. We were forced to transport products from the northern parts of Zimbabwe via Cape Town to Europe. Shipping was difficult and expensive, and I felt that we should reopen our sea connections via Mozambique. The fact that I was on a committee to decide which ports in South Africa would be developed to handle containers also convinced me that the Mozambican ports of Beira and Maputo offered us a cheaper trade route to South Africa, which we trade was almost 100 percent dependent with the rest of the world.

I discussed this with private sector and government leaders and with their support we formed the Beira Corridor Group (BCG). We quickly recruited almost 1,000 companies to the cause, raised some money and got to work. I traveled to Beira and came back completely shocked by what I had seen. That year, 500,000 Mozambique residents had starved to death. The image of walking skeletons remains with me today. The harbor itself consisted of abandoned, broken warehouses, grass and even trees growing in the harbor. The harbor is heavily silted up and empty.

The railway line was overgrown and unused, the road was full of potholes and car wrecks on both sides, evidence of ambushes and conflicts were everywhere. I camped in a hotel where there was no water, doors removed and windows broken, food scarce. The local currency is completely worthless.

Over the next three years, we raised and spent $700 million on the port and supporting infrastructure. We repaired the railway line and got it working again, dredged the port and restored infrastructure, cleaned the pipeline to Mutare and then extended it to Harare, and in 1990 a third of all our imports and exports went through the port. Our government sent 5,000 troops to the central provinces of Mozambique and our political lobby in the US made sure they recognized Frelimo and stopped supporting Renamo. We showed the world what we could do when we mobilized our private sector.

I moved in 1990 and didn’t get back until today. There are national elections next week and the campaign was in full swing. But what a stark contrast to 1987: the currency is stable at about 65 to 1, food is plentiful and the streets are buzzing with traffic. In my hotel the water was clean and warm, my hotel room spotless and maintained. But the biggest change was the port itself: it was three times the size of 1990, clean and well managed. The harbor was dredged up to 12 meters and a new dredger was working in the canal. There were 25 ships waiting to enter the port. The place looked and felt like it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do: handling record amounts of fuel and general cargo.

We are still highly dependent on South African ports. However, this causes many problems: the South Africans operate a shipping cartel that provides southern Africa with shipping services that are more expensive than they should be. South African ports are further away than their counterparts in Mozambique, often hundreds of kilometers away. Their ports are overloaded and relatively inefficient. Transnet, South Africa’s railway company, has virtually gone bankrupt. Truck drivers from northern landlocked states all say they prefer to use Zimbabwean routes to the sea and Mozambique’s ports because they are victims of criminal gangs and xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

High bridging costs (the costs of getting our exports and imports to and from our customers) are a crucial factor in determining our path to prosperity and growth. They increase the cost of everything we import and reduce our income from everything we export. They undermine our ability to compete with those who produce the same things we do. By simply switching from road to rail we can reduce the cost of basic food in Zimbabwe by more than 10 percent.

As in so many areas, China and Japan have shown the way forward; they have invested in their infrastructure and shipping. The Chinese cost of transportation and shipping from Shanghai to the United States is a third of what it costs us to get freight to Durban, South Africa. Our railways are not working, our roads are generally poor and traffic is slow, our border crossings are congested and it takes weeks to get a truck from the port to Katanga, now one of the main hubs for metals and minerals in the world .

And it’s not that we can’t solve this situation; we are already paying a high price for the inefficiencies and can easily afford to pay what it costs to fix the problem. All we have to do is come together and do what we did in 1987: put our collective shoulders behind the wheels of this wagon of opportunity and get it moving. Our governments cannot do this. They are strapped for cash and have little capacity to manage the process of change and development. If the private sector does not come to the party, there are no solutions except interventions by inefficient and often corrupt international organizations and foreign aid. We know where that takes us.

Beira shows us the way, but it is a lousy location for a port and will never be able to handle the amount of cargo needed if we are to achieve our goals. We need a new port on the Mozambique coast and new railway lines to serve it. Sites are available and the Government of Mozambique is prepared to facilitate their selection and development. The alternatives in Namibia and Angola are not as well located and would be expensive to build and connect to the interior. Our ancestors knew what they were doing when they built the railway lines to Beira and Maputo.

Eddie Cross

Harare, 5^e from October 2024.

Post published in: Featured