Benin gets €80 million-loan from AfDB to upgrade Cotonou Port

Benin has secured an 80 million euros loan facility from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to improve and expand Cotonou harbor, one of the main maritime access points for landlocked countries in West Africa.
The loan is split into two: €55 million from the African Development Bank and €25 million from Africa Growing Together Fund, a special fund co-financed by the African Development Bank and the People’s Bank of China, Abidjan-based institution said on Wednesday.
For Joseph Ribeiro, Deputy Director General for West Africa at the African Development Bank, the investment would strengthen the Bank Group’s operations in Benin.
The loan, according to the bank, will enable the construction of a new container terminal and expand the port area to 20 hectares for bulk and miscellaneous cargo.
“The project also entails the creation of a central access point with automated gantries, a 14-hectare parking area for heavy-duty vehicles equipped with an integrated, digitized management system linked to the port’s database, and an integrated center for faster foreign trade and freight processing”, hailed AfDB. “This will cut transit time in the port area to two hours and relieve congestion along nearby roads. It will also help improve working conditions for haulage truckers and the business environment for customs personnel and their technical partners”, it added in a statement.
The project will take three years. The Port of Cotonou is a transit port that handles an average of 80 to 90 merchant vessels monthly. It deals with 90 percent of the country’s international trade and 49 percent of transit traffic to Niger (37 percent), Burkina Faso (4 percent), Mali (3 percent) and Nigeria (5 percent).