"Asia is losing weight in the role of the world's factory; production and retail must be recalibrated. The Mediterranean will be the dock of long-haul maritime trade," writes the Catholic-inspired newspaper Avvenire. The transport crisis, with the considerable increase in costs, pushes to redraw the maps of world trade", writes Reuters.
The model that was based on the relocation of production with lower added value to emerging countries has entered into crisis at a time when the paralysis of maritime trade caused by Covid and the growth of local demand in China have sanctioned that Asia is no longer the only continent for large OEM producers for Europe and the USA.
The 'container crisis' on routes from the Far East to the Mediterranean and to the US has been the breaking point, but Asian policies of embargo and hoarding of raw materials show that the world cannot return to being what it was before. Production and retail trade are being re-established in areas closer to Europe and the United States.
Logistics has adapted and has already changed pace. The coronavirus has in fact paralyzed the retail trade, scrapping the concept of just in time, or the product made at the time of the request. Before the pandemic, warehouses had been almost abolished, because a pair of shoes arrived home in less than a month from anywhere; now you must wait for several months.
Western economies have begun to equip themselves. If until 2019 globalization rhymed with relocation, today we begin to talk about reshoring. In addition, the world fleet has been looking for a closer Asia, where to load and unload. And they had found it. Until last year, everyone believed that the new logistical heart of the world should be Eastern Europe, already with infrastructures and with capable workers.
The war in Ukraine has imposed different plans, thus relaunching the role of the Mediterranean and that of Africa. The Mediterranean Sea can be considered a kind of dock of long-range maritime trade, thanks to the fact that it connects Asia and the Atlantic through Suez and Gibraltar. Despite the globalization that has involved the oceans, the Mediterranean has never lost its centrality. Between 1995 and 2019, container traffic between Europe and Asia grew at an average annual rate of 8.2%, while the transatlantic route increased by 4.4% and the Transpacific by 5.2%. In 2013, China launched the One Belt One Road Initiative to connect Chinese hubs with the Mediterranean, which in 2015, through the doubling of the Suez Canal, became the protagonist of 20% of global shipments by sea, 27% of container line services and 30% of oil traffic.
In recent years, trade wars and the pandemic have led to the reconfiguration of global value chains, pushing for re-regionalization, with initiatives rather than reshoring, better to say nearshoring.
"In 2022 the war between Russia and Ukraine interrupted the continental Eurasian trade routes, which found an alternative in the routes that reach the Mediterranean through the Red Sea and the China-Central-Western Asia-Turkey route. The supply crisis and the energy crisis also mean that the Mediterranean dimension is the minimal choice to give a long-term strategic response. Finally, both demographic dynamics and climate change require immediately, and increasingly, coordinated responses at the level of the Mediterranean» reads an Italian report by the Ministry for the South and Territorial Cohesion, entitled “Verso Sud” (Towards the South), which foresees a growing economic role of Italy.
Moreover, according to the 2021 Italian Maritime Economy Report, maritime transport continues to represent the main 'vehicle' for the development of international trade; it is worth about 12% of global GDP and by 2025 container handling worldwide will grow at an average rate of 4.8% per year and will reach 1 billion TEU (acronym for twenty-foot equivalent unit). If supply chains bring certain supply chains back to Europe, short sea shipping will also grow. "The future of this logistical revolution is African - explains the president of Federlogistica- Conftrasporto (associations of carriers) Luigi Merlo to Paolo Viana of the Avvenire -. There are already ports such as Tangier and activities that highlight important development capacities, up to 5%, but above all because African states seek a relationship with Europe".
According to data from Federlogistica, China has also invested in infrastructure between the Mediterranean and Africa: 47 billion dollars in 52 African countries out of 54, in debt; in the last 20 years the total volume of trade between China and Africa has increased by 24.7% while Chinese loans reached 153 billion.
Therefore, Africans are looking for a partner who will help extract revenues from investments made with Chinese partners. The EU moved with a €300 billion plan and China itself increased traffic: trade in tonnes/miles generated by bulker ships on the Africa-China route had also increased in 2020.
However, in terms of logistics, Africa is still lagging behind. In 2019 it loaded 7% of global maritime trade and dumped 4.6%, concentrating activities in the North (36%). The sub-Saharan continent accounts for 12% of the volumes uploaded to developing countries and 7% of those downloaded, but it is poorly integrated into production networks; intra-regional trade is in its infancy and the whole world is waiting to see what will happen with the new AfCFTA, the treaty that created the pan-African free trade area.
African ports, when they operate, are equipped only to offer feeder services (connections with medium-small ships to ports not served by liner ships), and transhipment (unloading and reloading on larger or smaller ships), to global trade. The contribution to container trade is still low.
We need more inversion. The European Global Gateway finances renewable energy, the prevention of natural disasters, the internet, transport, the production and distribution of vaccines and education. Training too: “An extraordinary commitment would be needed to train African logistics professionals,” suggests Merlo to Avvenire.
Near Dakar a large center for managers has been built and if these investments multiply, the vision on migration flows would be subverted, making the continent a reservoir of skilled labor. "There is a lack of truck drivers, warehouse workers, operators of mechanical means – adds Merlo – and on a more qualified level, even cyber security technicians. 10% of the world's seafarers are Russians and Ukrainians, training will have to be done elsewhere and a concrete scenario opens in Africa, provided that the wheat crisis does not lead to famines capable of blocking this growth".
Supporting this process are the growing flows of containers that connect Europe and Africa right across the Mediterranean. On the other hand, national egoisms contribute to curbing it, starting with the increase in tariffs for the passage through Suez.
“The Mediterranean - underlines Merlo - needs governance and now only European countries are committed to this, but without this governance it will not be possible to fully exploit the resource it represents, and you will always have serious problems, starting with the environmental ones. Let's not forget that Mediterranean it is already the warmest sea in the world.”
