Autonomous Port of Djibouti, to give it its full title, the overriding priority of the Vision Djibouti 2035 national plan. This mentions the development of a special logistics zone, a road transport hub, the building of an international airport and a cargo village.

The main event in the recent past has been the construction of the Doraleh container terminal, 5km west of the main urban centre along the Gulf of Tadjoura. This facility was opened in February 2009, and is now operated by Ports of Djibouti, a joint venture between Dubai World and China Merchant Holding International (CMHI). It is presently being expanded by the Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port, a $590m scheme that will add 23ha of container terminals, 15 berths, as well as facilities for handling general and breakbulkit becoming more of a bottleneck that it already is. The reason is that 78% of all jobs in Kenya are created by the informal economy, and so are immune to direct taxation and resistant to indirect. As a result, some 40% of government revenue is generated by import and export duties collected at ports, above all Mombasa.

To keep pace with the rise in demand – principally imports – the port is undergoing a series of rolling expansion programmes. In February 2016, a big project was completed: the second phase of the Mombasa Port Development Project (MPDP). This is a scheme intended to increase the port’s container capacity by 50% by adding a second terminal at Kipevu West, two berths (one Panamax, the other Post-Panamax), and a set