The Angolan government has revealed plans to build Africa’s biggest shipping terminal. The new port will be at Dande, which is 50 kilometers north of the main Empresa Portuaria de Luanda EP.
To be incorporated is modern loading and unloading infrastructure, human capital and a port pier that would challenge the South African port of Durban as a regional hub for landlocked countries such as copper-rich Zambia.
Human capital will include the stock of competencies, knowledge, habits, social and personality attributes, including creativity, cognitive abilities, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce high economic value.
The port administrator for commercial, safety and environmental affairs Alberto Antonio Bengue said that the port will be bigger than Durban and will be a threat to other ports in the region in terms of competition. “The hub port will be strategically well located in a way that cargo from South and Central America, the U.S., and even Europe and Asia won’t take long.” Said Alberto.
Building a new port at Dande came after it was evident that container traffic at Luanda had more than doubled over the past five years to 912,900 20-foot equivalent units in 2013. The new harbor will probably handle ships with 13,000 containers and it may cost billions of dollars to build, according to Alberto. However, no estimates on costs, construction dates or the scale of the proposed port have been set as President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s office reviews the project, he said.
