West Africa Port Congestion Deepens: Conakry Waits Near Three Weeks, Shippers Must Recost Before Booking
While most of the market's attention this past week has been on Asia-Europe rates and Suez routings, West Africa's hub ports have quietly deteriorated to levels rarely seen in recent years. According to The Loadstar and Hapag-Lloyd's Africa operations updates, berthing delays at Conakry, Guinea have reached 16 to 20 days, Freetown in Sierra Leone has exceeded 10 days and worsened by roughly four days month on month, and reefer yard utilization at Tema, Ghana has climbed past 100%. Monrovia is running 8 to 10 days late, Tema 4 to 6, Abidjan 3 to 4 - virtually no port on the West African coast is on schedule.
This is not a one-off disruption but the result of cargo growth outpacing port capacity year after year. Conakry handled roughly 400,000 TEU in 2025 and is expected to exceed 500,000 TEU in 2026; port officials disclosed as early as mid-year that volumes forecast for 2030 had already been reached five years ahead of schedule. Five years of growth compressed into one, while yards, berths, inland transport and inspection processes failed to keep up. At Tema, about 70% of containers undergo intrusive physical inspection, well above international norms, and slow clearance combined with empty container return difficulties is further choking yard turnaround.
For shippers, the impact is already showing up on invoices. CMA CGM began levying a congestion surcharge on refrigerated cargo bound for Tema from August 25 - USD 400 per TEU for cargo originating outside Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and North Africa, or roughly USD 800 for a 40-foot reefer. Hapag-Lloyd followed in September with USD 250 per TEU on affected reefer cargo. Several carriers have also begun rerouting Guinea-bound cargo via Lome or even Las Palmas to dodge Conakry's queue.
Drawing on A-Choice's experience on West African lanes, we advise shippers of non-ferrous metals, timber, machinery and other cargo categories to work through three calculations before booking. First, transit time: contract delivery dates should explicitly factor in destination port delays - for Conakry, allow at least three weeks of buffer, or every shipment becomes a breach risk. Second, cost: under DDP or destination-port terms, demurrage, storage and congestion surcharges most likely fall on the shipper, so quotations must carry this as a separate risk line; ordinary-lane assumptions do not apply to West Africa. Third, routing: reefer and temperature-sensitive cargo should be re-evaluated for Tema, and it may be worth paying for a transshipment alternative in exchange for certainty. For dry cargo too, confirm the destination port's acceptance policy, empty return location and yard capacity for every booking before the box lands with nowhere to go.
Freetown illustrates the nature of the problem. In August the local port authority led a multi-agency clearance drive and at one point declared itself off the congestion list - but cargo volumes did not fall, and by early October delays had climbed back past 10 days. Administrative action cannot close a structural gap, and this congestion wave is likely to persist through the Q4 volume peak. Rather than betting on the ports clearing up, build the delays and surcharges directly into your shipping plan - on West African lanes, certainty itself now commands a premium.
