Nine years ago, a World Bank study warned that West Africa’s container traffic would nearly triple by 2025 and that existing ports could not cope. Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Benin and Senegal responded by building new terminals and quays. Liberia added no new terminal. Today, ships wait offshore for weeks, cargo is diverted to neighboring ports, and Liberian traders say their capital has been trapped in containers for up to seven months.
MONROVIA – From the beaches of Liberia’s capital, the crisis is plain to see. Cargo ships sit at anchor on the horizon, waiting for a berth at the Freeport of Monrovia, the country’s main gateway for food, fuel, building materials and consumer goods.
By Rodney D. Sieh
On Tuesday, about 1,500 Liberian businesswomen and importers marched to the Capitol Building to demand action. Goods ordered from China, they told lawmakers, are taking as long as seven months to arrive. With the Christmas trading season weeks away, the money they borrowed and invested is sitting in steel boxes somewhere between Asia and Monrovia.
The crisis did not arrive without warning.
A warning on the record
In June 2017, the World Bank published a regional study, Container Terminals Concessions: Making the Most of Ports in West Africa. It projected that by 2025, container traffic across the region would reach almost three times its 2011 level. Its conclusion was blunt. Better port performance alone would not absorb growth on that scale. Countries would need to expand terminals at existing ports and develop new ones.
The study covered the whole region, not Liberia alone. But Liberia, where the Freeport handles more than 90 percent of the country’s imports, had as much at stake as anyone.
What the neighbors built
Across the region, governments and private operators poured money into new capacity:
• Côte d’Ivoire opened a second container terminal at Abidjan in late 2022, at a cost of about US$953 million. It can handle more than 1.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot containers) a year and berth ships drawing 16 metres.
• Sierra Leone completed a US$120 million, 270-metre quay extension in Freetown in 2018. The port can now take ships carrying up to 6,000 containers.
• Benin finished the first phase of its Cotonou port expansion in January 2026.
• Senegal is building a US$1.2 billion deep-water port at Ndayane, due in 2028, because its main port at Dakar is running near its physical limits.
Some of these projects were already planned before the Bank’s report. All of them reflect the same reading of the region’s future: traffic was coming, and ports had to grow to meet it.
What Liberia did
Liberia’s major port reform came earlier, in 2010. That year, the government handed the Freeport’s container operations to APM Terminals, part of Denmark’s Maersk group, under a 25-year concession. The company rebuilt a quay that dated to the 1940s and was close to collapse. It also paved a container yard and installed new gates. By 2015, its stated goal was to double the port’s annual capacity to 200,000 TEUs by 2017.
That work restored a war-damaged port. It did not prepare the port for the next decade of growth. In the nine years since the World Bank’s warning, Liberia has added no new container terminal.
Talks with Morocco’s port operator Marsa Maroc show how slowly things have moved. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding in late 2024. A contract to manage two jetties followed in February 2026. The bigger prize is a proposed US$230 million concession for a new three-berth multipurpose terminal, and it remains under review.
Dredging may be the most telling failure. Under the 2010 arrangement, the Liberian government, not the operator, was responsible for dredging the port. Lawmakers now say repeated dredging delays are one reason larger vessels cannot berth. The National Port Authority (NPA) says a dredging contract is imminent but has given no completion date.
The cost of waiting
The NPA has publicly acknowledged that the Freeport cannot keep pace with the size and number of ships now calling. Yard space is full.
Shipping lines are passing the costs on. Since November 1, French carrier CMA CGM has added a congestion surcharge of €250 per dry container and €600 per refrigerated container on Monrovia-bound cargo from Northern Europe. Those charges will reach Liberian consumers through market prices.
Some Liberia-bound vessels spend more than 30 days at sea. Their cargo is routed through ports in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana while it waits for space in Monrovia. In effect, Liberia’s neighbors are receiving its goods before Liberians do.
APM Terminals this week announced emergency measures to clear the backlog. It also said Maersk will make Monrovia the first port of call on one of its West Africa services from January 2027. The House of Representatives has summoned the port authority, the terminal operator and shipping agents to explain the delays.
A fair accounting
New berths alone will not end the crisis. Part of the delay comes from congestion at regional transshipment hubs, where Liberia-bound containers change ships. Tema in Ghana and Freetown in Sierra Leone face CMA CGM surcharges too. Clearance through customs, cargo tracking and inspection adds its own days.
But there is a difference. Liberia’s neighbors are managing growing pains on top of new capacity. Liberia has the growing pains without the capacity.
What decisive action looks like
• Dredge: sign and publish the long-promised dredging contract, with a firm completion date.
• Decide on Marsa Maroc: send the proposed terminal concession to the Legislature in full, for open and timely review.
• Tie the APM review to investment: finish the review of APM’s concession, and link any extension to binding commitments on new yard space and berths.
• Ease the bottlenecks: open inland container depots, and set enforceable clearance timelines for every agency in the chain.
Since 2017, Liberia has held elections, summits and hearings. Officials who had the diagnosis nine years ago are now asking market women what went wrong. The answer has not changed since the World Bank wrote it down. Expand the port, as Liberia’s neighbors have.
Support Independent Journalism
Your support helps FrontPage Africa continue delivering independent, credible, and impactful journalism. Every contribution strengthens our ability to investigate, inform, and hold power accountable while keeping quality journalism accessible to our readers.
Support our journalism or subscribe to receive the latest FrontPage Africa stories and updates.
