Africa has the potential to grow intra-Africa trade tenfold if more was done to speed up trade agreements and enable seamless border operations. According to Terence Odendaal, founder and managing director of Teralco Logistics, there is a desperate need for more action and less talk on the continent. His company has operations in various regions of Africa, and Odendaal says delays at border posts are something the logistics industry experiences daily. “There is sometimes a lack of urgency with regard to seamless 24/7 one-stop borders on the continent. This, in turn, adds unnecessary costs to the supply chain.” He says improving border operations and implementing trade agreements more quickly will make a vast difference to trade. “The distance from Johannesburg to Harare is shorter than Johannesburg to Cape Town, but it takes five times the amount of time and is double the cost. Politicians don’t understand what this does to their own economies.” According to Odendaal, transport and logistics companies have become experts at dealing with the challenges, yet far more could be achieved if the obstacles were removed. “At Teralco, we defined Africa as our sweet spot from inception. We have a strong belief in the continent and what it has to offer. Over the past few years we have seized the proverbial bull by the horns and scaled up our operation to introduce more African solutions,” he says. Considering that many of the countries on the continent are growing up to five times faster than South Africa, the opportunities for business are increasing. Odendaal says with this in mind the company has expanded its fleet, covering more SADC countries, and also recently invested in a new 22 000sqm racked, foodgrade warehouse in Johannesburg as part of its strategy to invest and build capacity and infrastructure in its operations.
INSERT: The distance from Johannesburg to Harare is shorter than Johannesburg to Cape Town, but it takes five times the amount of time and is double the cost. – Terence Odendaal