Identifying The Influential Factors Of Operational Performance For The Dry Ports In Ethiopia

Dry ports are useful especially in land-locked countries whose shipments come through a neighboring seaport and help their regional development.Ethiopia is one of the landlocked countries which is located in east Africa.The government of Ethiopia established the company Dry Port Service Enterprise(DPSE)for the development of dry ports in Ethiopia and constructed eight dry ports and they have been helping the country to save the foreign currency and increased its efficiency in import and export as the overall countries.However,these dry ports are facing challenges throughout time from a different perspective.In this study,three dry ports(Modjo,Kality,and Mekelle)were selected to identify the influential factors of operational performance due to being the major transaction corridor of the country and industrial city with fast-growing cargo flow.This study has used the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches,an online survey by using a close-ended questionnaire for the decision-maker or experts,and an AHP model including six criteria applied for the analysis using MATLAB software.The results of the study point out the priorities of the criteria discussed by the experts and the obtained weight of the criteria from the analysis were government policy,dry port capacity,advanced technology,physical infrastructure customer service,and human resource from the highest to lowest influential factor and differing priorities in each dry port.The study also pointed out Mekelle dry port was highly affected by these influential factors followed by Kality and Modjo dry ports.