Freight services are to one percentage of those activities like goods transported to thousands of kilometers away. Africa has been evolving economically and socially, the freight services play a prominent role in connecting nations, nourish trade and help in building the economic growth of the country.
Logistic and freight forwarding services they may sound similar, but they are different from each other, with similar background. Logistic company has their own assets inclusive of intermodal fleets of trucks, boats and planes. They are responsible for managing goods physical movements. Freight services doesn’t have any own assets, they partner with the logistic company. Freight forwarder have more knowledge and experience about the logistic company in many different specialty areas. They handle all of the paperwork including custom documentation, bill of lading, shipper’s export declarations, insurance forms and letter of invoice.
The early stage of Africa, various forms of trade and transportation existed, which was more simple and less structured than the present freight service. The services are carried in different form like maritime, land based or air. Africa being developing country, there is no sufficient roads and rail infrastructure in certain part of regions, which leads to increase in cost, delay in transportation. Only logistics companies can’t work toward the smooth access of their delivery, here public – private partnerships can establish investment in these areas for the better enhancements.
Every country has its own terms in custom regulation, documentation and tariff structure, based on these procedures leads to delay in the cargo clearance and increased cost. As per the documentation, still parts of Africa use manual documentation process rather than electronic documentation process which could be time consuming, having little higher error rate and accessing data can be little tedious process. The electronic documentation is really helpful in accessing data and improved efficiency.
As the technology evolved, the people want to know the exact location of their cargo. So, it essential for every freight service to have access to advanced technologies. This helps them to know the accurate and timely information of the cargo.
There are certain security issues in the certain part of Africa like cargo theft or piracy in maritime routes. Although the technology has evolved through various phases, still part of Africa hasn’t adopted any advanced technologies and there are some challenges related to network connectivity, which leads to difficultly in tracking and managements issues.
