Africa's corridors, measured rather than assumed.
A trade lane is more than two ports on a map. It is a volume profile, a seasonal rhythm, a set of recurring shippers and a cost structure. The Lane Explorer surfaces all four.
The lanes that carry the most African volume.
Indicative annual container volumes across the corridors most frequently analysed on the platform.
| Corridor | Direction | Annual volume | Peak months | Dominant cargo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lagos ⇄ Rotterdam | Both | 1.2M TEU | Sep–Nov | Containerised consumer goods |
| Mombasa ⇄ Shanghai | Import-heavy | 820K TEU | Mar–May | Machinery, textiles, steel |
| Tema ⇄ Antwerp | Export-heavy | 540K TEU | Oct–Jan | Cocoa and agricultural products |
| Dar es Salaam ⇄ Jebel Ali | Both | 480K TEU | Jun–Aug | Transhipment and project cargo |
| Djibouti ⇄ Mumbai | Import-heavy | 360K TEU | Feb–Apr | Fuel, fertiliser, grains |
| Dakar ⇄ Le Havre | Both | 290K TEU | Nov–Feb | Fisheries, groundnut, retail goods |
Corridor analytics that survive scrutiny.
Volume and share
Monthly TEU and tonnage with each carrier's and shipper's share of the lane.
Seasonality
Multi-year monthly indices that separate genuine growth from harvest and holiday cycles.
Routing patterns
Direct versus transhipped movements and the hubs that intermediate each corridor.
Carrier mix
Which lines actually call the lane, how often, and how that has shifted.
Growth signals
Rolling twelve-month comparisons with new entrant and exit detection.
Inland corridors
Gateway-to-hinterland links such as Mombasa–Kampala and Dar es Salaam–Lusaka.
Plan capacity against evidence, not last year's assumption.
Freight forwarders, shippers and port authorities use lane analytics to test whether a corridor is genuinely growing before committing space, equipment or investment.
- Validate a new service before allocating vessel capacity
- Time procurement around a corridor's real seasonal peak
- Benchmark your own volumes against total lane throughput
- Detect when volume shifts from one gateway to a neighbouring one
- Support port investment cases with independent throughput evidence
Questions, answered.
Where do lane volumes come from?
They are aggregated upward from individual shipment records, not from published carrier statistics, so the underlying consignments are always inspectable.
Do you cover air and road freight?
Maritime and air cargo are covered where filings exist. Cross-border road corridors are covered for markets that publish land customs declarations.
Can I define a custom lane?
Yes. Any port pair, port-to-country or country-to-country combination can be built and saved as a custom lane.