MTWARA: IN the past six years, Mtwara port has risen to prominence, finding itself in the
perch of Tanzania’s top three ports — Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Mtwara.To trace its development, Our Staff Writer visited the port recently and went through its archival documents in order to explain why the port’s development has been slow. He reports that Mtwara is a very old port.
It could not develop because of its unfortunate history of being located in southern Tanzania and hence bordering Mozambique — a country that had to be liberated via a bloody guerrilla war. He reports that today, with one of the latest shipping scanner capable of scanning 30 containers an hour and a ship to shore gantry crane (SSG), Mtwara port is known beyond Africa and handles ships coming and going to as far as India and Vietnam…. Mtwara port is a very old port with a long history.
The port’s current status can only be understood by the help of history; history helps us to know the role the port played many centuries back. Mtwara port was used by Chinese traders who visited the eastern coast in the third century AD. Then the port hosted Portuguese, Spanish and later Arab traders.
The German colonialists used the port to govern their huge German East Africa [Tanganyika, Burundi and Rwanda]. German colonialists were replaced by British colonialists when the former were defeated in the Second World War. However, Mtwara port remained important to foreign rulers and traders.
In the 1950s, the British colonial government paid significant attention to Mtwara port as it struggled, but failed, to establish a huge groundnuts scheme in the then huge Nachingwea District. When Tanganyika became independent from Britain on December 9, 1961, the Tanganyika government wanted to build a 100-million road that would have linked Mtwara port with Dar es Salaam. The project was shelved for lack of money.
Even when the United Republic of Tanzania was born in 1964, Mtwara port could not be developed appropriately for two main reasons.
The first, and the most important, is that 1964 was the time Frelimo had launched its guerrilla war against Portuguese colonisers, making Mtwara Region a war zone; a no-go area. Frelimo’s command headquarters was in Nachingwea.
The second reason is that the young Union Government had very limited resources to develop the country. To make matters worse, Tanzania had to fight a twoyear very costly war against Uganda’s Idd Amin’s aggression which ended in 1980.
Amin was defeated but Tanzania’s economy was in tatters. The economy did not stabilise until roughly 2010. Even then the fact still remains that Tanzania’s economy is part of the world’s turbulent global economy, where Third World countries suffer most.
The pace of Tanzania’s economy is dependent on the performance of the world’s globalised economy. To develop Tanzania’s ports, the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) was formed.
The TPA oversees development of designated ports — and it is the TPA that is now championing the development of Mtwara port. Today, Mtwara port is one of Tanzania’s top three ports: Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Mtwara.
The TPA is struggling to build physical infrastructure so that Mtwara port can be an efficient port. But infrastructure is built on land, and better still, on your own land. Mtwara port has 2,712 hectares of its own land, making it easy for authorities to expand and develop port facilities.
Ports are about efficient berths, the shipping saying goes. Mtwara port now has two berths, supported by three 45-ton reach stackers, five 8-12-ton empty handlers, thirteen 3-42-ton forklifts, 10 spreaders, 14 terminal tractors, 20 trailers, one 100-ton mobile harbour crane, three 30-50-ton mobile cranes, two wheel loaders and skid.
One of the berths is 20 metres deep while another is 13 metres deep. Further, the port has vessels for servicing ships. It has two berthing tugs, a mooring boat, a pilot boat and three patrol boats.
Mtwara port’s annual cargo handling capacWhy Mtwara port is rising to prominence ity stands at 1,000,000 tonnes. The port’s gate pathway is 230 wide. This justifies the port’s growing prominence.
A statement on the port’s performance prepared by the Port Manager Ferdinand Nyathi attributes the growing importance of the port to equally increasing economic activities in the Mainland southern regions and Zanzibar.
“Our port now is famous because it is significantly facilitating business in Tanzania and externally in Mozambique, Comoro, Malawi, Zambia, India Vietnam and so on,” says Mr Nyathi, naming the major types of cargo being handled by the port as raw cashew nuts, cement, foodstuffs, containers for projects, oil, coal and mixed cargo.
The easiest way of measuring the importance and performance of a port is to study the trend of ships calling on that port.
According to the Port Manager, in 2018/19 fiscal year, 16 international ships called on the port and 125 coast-plying ships also called on the port, making a combined total of 141 ships.
In 2019/20, 32 international ships, 78 coast-plying ships, making a total of 110 ships used the port. In 2020/21, 26 international, coast-plying 58 — total 84; 2021/22: 50 international, coast-plying 116 — total 166; 2022/23: 106 international, 207 coast-plying — total 313 and between July 2023 and January 2024, some 94 international and 93 coastplying — total 187 ships.
He says in six years starting 2018/19 fiscal year, there has been significant loading and offloading activities in the port except for two consecutive fiscal years starting 2020/21.
In 2018/19 fiscal year, the port offloaded 45,072 tonnes and loaded 61,098, making a total of 106,170. The following year, the port offloaded 30,433 tonnes, loaded 243,034 making a total of 273,467 tonnes.
In 2020/21, some 42,225 tonnes were offloaded, while 135, 163 tonnes were loaded, making a total of 177,388. The following year 2021/22 some 85,887 tonnes were offloaded while 506,488 tonnes 592,365. In 2022/23 some 92,190 tonnes were offloaded, while 1,536,485 were loaded, making a total of 1,628,615 tonnes.
In six months, between July last year and January this year, 115,141 tonnes were offloaded and 901,155 tonnes were loaded making a total of 1,016,296 tonnes. The statistics simply explain that the port is struggling to be on the right footing.
But there is an inside story behind this performance. Mr Nyathi says Mtwara port has risen to this kind of performance because there has been infrastructural development. The old berth that is 385 metres long is now capable of handling 45,000 DWT.
The new berth has 75,807 square metres of land and is capable of holding 8,600 containers at a go. With enough land, the port has established three yards with a total area of 38,000 square metres and capable of holding at a goal 4,350 containers.
Besides, the port has two godowns (or sheds) with a total area of 12,500 square metres and capable of holding over 18,000 tonnes of cargo at a go. He also attributes steeping efficiency to existence of requisite port equipment. “We have installed one of the latest cranes, called ship to shore gantry crane (SSG).
This crane handles 25 containers an hour. On top of that we have a scanner, capable of scanning up to 30 containers an hour,” he says.
The port also has attractive incentives to users. While the wharfage charges for containerised cargo are universally determined at one per cent, Mtara port wharfage charges are collected at 0.5 percent.
Secondly, the TPA has allowed Mtwara port to charge shore handling and stevedoring charges at 30 percent. Other ports still charge at 100 per cent.
Mtwara port has extended time for retaining empty containers from 15 to 21 days, and for full containers, duration has been extended from 7 to 14 days. There is urgent need to link the port with good highways that would be used by exporters and importers.
Investors need the port and investment opportunities abound and are highlighted in the Mtwara Development Corridor.
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