Banking on East Africa
New service linking India, UAE, Kenya, Tanzania. Three shipping lines have one eye clearly focused on expected growth of 8% for East African economies. They are set to cooperate on a joint service that will connect India and the United Arab Emirates to Kenya and Tanzania.
Three players have announced their plans to cooperate in a new service. They are Singapore-based SeaLead, founded in 2017; the Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), which is ranked among the world’s top ten box carriers; and TS Lines, which was launched in Singapore in 2006.
Weekly sailings, short transit times
The three partners will offer weekly sailings between India, the United Arab Emirates and East Africa from the end of November onwards. Four vessels will operate on the route – two deployed by SeaLead, and one each by OOCL and TS Lines. The port rotation for the link will start in Nhava Sheva (India), from where it will proceed to Mundra (India), Jebel Ali (UAE), Khalifa (UAE), Mombasa (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) before returning to Nhava Sheva.
The economy of the Kenya / Tanzania region is expected to grow by around 8% annually, according to a spokesperson for SeaLead, making East Africa an interesting economic hub with growing business opportunities for emerging players, the shipping lines added.
Strong through cooperation
Regional economic growth is strongly supported by the East African Community (EAC), an intergovernmental organisation formed in the year 2000. Its activities focus on developing the area’s infrastructure, which is necessary for the expansion of trade in Africa, the EAC has pointed out.
SeaLead manager Henry Schmidl, in turn, elaborated that the three partners are “pleased to launch this service as a collaborative effort. Business connections between India and the United Arab Emirates, as well as both of those countries’ links with East Africa, have been steadily increasing over the past few years.”
According to Schmidl the new service “will provide faster connections for all of the three shipping lines’ customers, thus resulting in shorter transit times. This will open up new options and opportunities for our clients.”