Freight, logistics and transport industry experts have called for the restoration of South Africa‘s roads network, the restoration and development of the rail network and efficient ports and border posts, arguing that the country can only remain competitive if its logistics networks and supply chains function coherently in concert.

South Africa is a major exporting developing nation, with diverse exports and remains classified as a high middle-income country, said Gordon Institute of Business Science Business School research economist Dr Roelof Botha at the Transport Forum conference, in Johannesburg, on December 1.

South Africa is developing a platform on which to measure and monitor its complete logistics network across all six modalities of road, rail, air, sea, pipelines and conveyor belts.

Industry organisation the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF) CEO Dr Juanita Maree detailed the work being done to create such a system, which would help to provide transparency for users of South Africa‘s logistics network and help to improve services, as well as provide data and evidence for transport and infrastructure development policy-makers.

However, she emphasised that, while a digital solution was part of the broader solution that was needed, without the infrastructure of road, rail, air and seaports and pipelines, digitalisation would not help, and there was a need to bring in much more physical infrastructure in Africa.

“Another lesson from SAAFF’s and its partners’ efforts to develop a way of monitoring the entire supply chain is that more funding must be mobilised to overcome this challenge. This means we will need to bring in the private sector and, currently, government does not have a model for how to bring the private sector into the logistics space,” she said.

The industry, so far determined to include five distinct government departments, 12 vertical role-players and 41 vertical sectors, must work hard in 2023 to get this formula right. Once this was in place, the industry must set priorities on what the short- and medium-term logistics network must look like, she added.

Further, the industry must consider what it would look like in the long term, Maree emphasised.

“The industry is working on what the long-term logistics network will look like in comparison to global supply chains,” she said.

The logistics industry must work according to international factors, and there must be a space for government to talk to the different role-players in the industry, partially aided by the work being done to identify the actors in the logistics network, Maree noted.

“Currently, we do not have a logistics monitoring system that looks after the modality of transport and which has been verified to be functioning at its desired capacity, nor how this links the verified capacity and the demonstrated capacity.”

Maree announced that industrial science research body the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research would launch a logistics observatory laboratory in February that will monitor South Africa‘s supply chains. Read more here 

Original Source:  https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/transport-forum-highlights-need-for-multimodal-logistics-to-remain-competitive-2022-12-02

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