The West African logistics calendar: when to ship, and when not to

In short. Four periods constrain West African logistics. The rains, roughly June to October and heaviest in July to September, degrade secondary roads and the last leg to sites off the main axis. Harvest peaks absorb the regional truck fleet: cashew February to June, cocoa October to March, cotton December to April, groundnuts November to February. Eid al-Adha stops ports, customs, banks and hauliers for several days, with congestion on both sides of it. And the fourth quarter combines institutional budget closure with commercial restocking, making it the most congested and expensive of the year.

Ask a planner in Rotterdam when to ship to Bamako and they will look at ocean schedules. Ask an operator in Dakar and they will ask what month you mean.

West African logistics runs on an annual rhythm that is invisible from outside and decisive on the ground. A route that takes a given number of days in February behaves differently in August. A truck that is available in November is not in March. None of this is in a schedule you can download.

Here is the year, as it is actually experienced.

The rains: roughly June to October

The West African monsoon runs from around June to October, arriving later and lasting less as you move north. On the Sahelian corridors the heavy period is concentrated in July, August and September.

What it changes: the paved trunk roads stay open, but secondary roads and laterite tracks degrade, some become impassable, and the last leg to a site off the main axis is the part that fails. Bridges and low crossings can close. Loading and discharge on unstabilised ground becomes difficult — a low-loader on wet laterite is a recovery operation waiting to happen.

Convoys slow, queues at posts lengthen, and the honest planning response is not to promise the dry-season transit time in August. A realistic date announced and met is worth more than an optimistic one missed, particularly on a first shipment where you are establishing what your word is worth.

Practical consequence: heavy and out-of-gauge moves are scheduled for the dry season wherever the project allows, and site consumables are stocked ahead of the rains rather than during them.

Harvest peaks absorb the truck fleet

This is the constraint nobody outside the region anticipates, and it affects you even if you are not shipping agricultural produce.

When a major crop comes in, the regional truck fleet moves toward it. Rates rise, availability drops, and a shipper of cement or equipment competes for the same vehicles as a cashew exporter.

The main peaks:

Booking transport into a peak on the corridor concerned means paying a peak rate for a scarcer vehicle. Booking around it, where your schedule allows, is a straightforward saving that costs nothing but planning.

Religious and public holidays

Two observances shape the working year across most of the region.

Ramadan, whose dates move earlier by about eleven days each year on the Gregorian calendar, changes working rhythms for a month. Handling continues, and it is slower, particularly for physical labour in heat.

Eid al-Adha — Tabaski, the larger of the two festivals in this region — is a hard stop of several days. Ports, customs offices, banks and hauliers all pause. Two effects follow: nothing clears during the period, and everything tries to clear immediately before and after it, producing congestion on both sides.

Two secondary effects worth knowing. The livestock trade in the weeks before Tabaski absorbs road capacity in the Sahel. And the hides and skins trade peaks immediately after it, which is when an exporter of that commodity should be buying.

Add national independence days and public holidays, which differ by country — and matter on a transit where the goods cross two or three.

The end-of-year surge

Two effects compound in the last quarter.

Institutional budgets close. Public bodies, donors and internationally funded projects spend against annual appropriations, and unspent money is lost. Procurement accelerates from October, deliveries are demanded before the year end, and everyone is competing for the same capacity in December.

Commercial restocking for the year-end retail season arrives at the same moment.

The result is the most congested and expensive quarter of the year for anyone who has not booked ahead. If your delivery is not genuinely year-end-bound, moving it to January costs you nothing and buys you capacity.

Reading the year backwards

The way to use this is to plan from the delivery date backwards, not from the purchase order forwards.

Take the date the goods must be on site. Subtract the inland leg, at the transit time for that season rather than the best case. Subtract the customs window, and the free storage period you do not want to exceed. Subtract the ocean transit. Subtract the supplier's lead time. What you get is the date the order had to be placed — and it is very often earlier than the date it was.

Then check what your schedule crosses: rains, a harvest peak on your corridor, Tabaski, the December surge. Each one that falls inside your window is either an adjustment now or a surprise later.

What we do

We build the calendar into the file rather than discovering it. When we tell you a date, it reflects the season the shipment actually falls in, the state of the corridor, and what else is competing for trucks that month.

That occasionally means telling a client that the date they want is not realistic. It is a less pleasant conversation than agreeing, and it is considerably less unpleasant than the one that follows a missed delivery.

Sources

• FAO GIEWS — country briefs for West Africa, for cropping calendars and harvest periods by country.
• ECOWAS Trade Information System — regional trade and corridor information.
• Public holiday dates are national and change annually; Islamic observances move on the Gregorian calendar. Confirm dates for the countries on your route before fixing a schedule.

Read next

Warehousing and distribution in West Africa for holding stock ahead of the constrained periods, and buying from Africa for the harvest windows in detail.