Logistics On Import-Export In Western And Central Africa: Problems And Alternatives Solutions

This paper elaborates key supply chain consideration especially in Logistics on import-export issues in Western and Central African countries. Transshipment in WCA will reflect a wide range of additional business considerations by ocean carriers, including the capacity of the ports to handle significantly increased traffic, draft and infrastructure consideration, productivity to minimize turnaround time and country stability, therefore Central and Western African countries such as Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Cost need to focus on improvement of Ports efficiency in order to feed ships Companies, big sizes cargos demand and also good feeder services for landlocked countries of Central Africa. Firstly, the author introduces Supply chain Management and the theory of logistics which constitute the theatrical background for subsequence, analysis. Especially on Cameroonian Coastal and Douala port competitiveness regarding trade Agreements, the FDI policy in Africa and Logistics services for the Import, Export and Transit between Cameroon and Chad, Cameroon and Central African Republic (CAR). Then, in the third part, this paper gives the overview of Problems on Logistics in Central African Countries especially in Cameroon; the author lays the SWOT analysis for the Douala's Port situation in Cameroon, in order to find some solutions for its Logistics improvement. Finally the author point out that the Challenges for Western and Central African countries, Cameroon in particular are to improve Ports efficiency by reducing taxes, time of clearance customs prices and develop infrastructure at ports and for feeder services. Attracting so new investments on Logistics companies, and shipping companies, with the concern of keeping Douala Port competitive and the main port of CEMAC, necessary changes in the government regulations are also needed, some suggestions, such as promote the Cameroonian Export and investing on alternative Ports like Kribi Port have been forward to at the end of the paper.