Shipping it: moving towards a brighter future for Africa

Somewhere in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, copper begins a journey. Before it becomes part of a battery, power grid, or the device you’re reading this article on, it will travel overland through other African nations like Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, before being loaded on a ship to Asia.

Backed-up border posts. Warehouses. Insurers. Financiers. Transport operators. Multiple legal systems, with roots in both civil and common law. That journey, says shipping and transport expert Andrew Robinson, a director at leading firm Deneys, epitomises the current complexities and challenges African trade.

Many global and local discussions about Africa’s future focus on the continent’s critical minerals riches, technological innovations, or its young dynamic population, but the future of African commerce, says Andrew, may depend not simply on what the continent produces, but on how effectively it moves it.

And there’s plenty of work still to be done there to help unlock Africa’s potential. Before African can capture greater value from its mineral wealth, agricultural products, and other natural resources, build manufacturing capacity or realise the ambitions of AfCFTA, such goods must move; often across thousands of kilometres, crossing borders and legal systems, before reaching markets. Along the way that shipment of copper from the DRC will likely encounter bottlenecks, security risks, insurance complications, and regulatory complexities.

“Within Africa, the vast majority of goods are moved by road, and it’s a big problem,” says Andrew, one of Africa’s leading shipping and marine insurance lawyers. “It’s inefficient, destroys the roads, plus you get the biggest curse of being stuck at border controls. The queuing of the borders is an absolute nightmare. If you could truck your goods down without border stops it would take four or five days, but round trips are now taking up to 50 days.”

Beyond delays and inefficiencies, there are also massive complexities if something happens along the way, with rare experts such as Andrew and the Deneys admiralty, shipping, and transport team having to work out what laws apply where (unlike in Europe), there’s no regime that deals with how goods are to be moved through southern Africa and all the countries and risks there.

Andrew is in favour of creating a more integrated regional transport framework, possibly akin to a localised version of Europe’s longstanding CMR (a uniform legal framework for cross-border road freight across Europe), tailored to African needs.

“It would be an absolute game-changer,” he says. “Goods would move more securely, more quickly, more efficiently. That’s logistics, it’s about making sure I can get your goods from A to B as cheaply, efficiently, and safely as possible.”

He would also like to see an African coastal shipping line that moves goods around southern Africa, akin to the Jones Act in the United States, which mandates that all vessels transporting goods or passengers between US ports must be built and flagged in the US, owned by US citizens, and crewed by locals.

“That kind of cabotage is something that I think would work and be beneficial to the subcontinent,” adds Andrew, who unexpectedly fell in love with shipping and transport law while studying at the University of Cape Town in the early 1980s.

At Deneys, Andrew is part of a talented and highly experienced admiralty, shipping, and transport practice that also includes fellow directors Nick Veldman, Peter Lamb, and Carol Holness, and is led by consultant Malcolm Hartwell, who is a Master Mariner as well as Head of Admiralty, Shipping, and Transport for Africa. The Directors are supported by Senior Associate Nicholene Mazibuko, associates Sonul Sanshkreet, Mmathabo Lekalakala, and AI guru Francis Makkink.

In addition Deneys has a specialised ports regulatory team that includes Andrew, fellow director Ugen Odayar, and associate Adam Butler.

“We may be the only firm in Africa that has a Master Mariner as a senior lawyer,” says Andrew. “Believe me, when something goes wrong, a ship runs aground, Malcolm can tell you what happened. He deeply understands ships and cargo.”

With the complexities and layers of regulatory and practical risks for transport and shipping in Africa, it’s vital for businesses to have a ‘one stop shop’ where they can turn, and that is what the Deneys team provides, with its high-level expertise.

Like transport being the largely unseen architecture of continental trade – while a hugely vital factor - shipping and transport law is a critical area that can often seem overshadowed by other eye-catching practices. “It’s not quite the bridesmaid, but thereabouts,” chuckles Andrew. “People forget, but we love it, because every time we speak to our M&A people or our energy lawyers, we say ‘you’ve either got to bring it in, or ship it out’. Some aspect of what you’re doing requires something to be moved from A to B. Transport is so very important.”

Andrew believes transport corridors across Africa supported by harmonised legal

frameworks could transform trade across the continent. It’s not simply about logistics, but economic integration in the world’s largest free trade area. Legal certainty, Andrew argues, is every bit as important as roads, railways, and ports.

Deneys has deliberately built a team around the entire movement of goods, with four key pillars: commercial contracts, insurance, carriage, and finance. Their multidisciplinary team spans Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town and includes shipping litigators, logistics specialists, marine insurance experts, and commercial lawyers, alongside Hartwell’s rare blend of law and qualified master mariner.

“The joy of doing shipping law is that you meet the most interesting people,” shares Andrew, who admits that as a law student decades ago he wasn’t sure he wanted to practice law until he took a Carriage of Goods by Sea elective. “You get TED talks on steroids from absolute experts in their fields who can explain why something can burn, or go rotten, why a ship failed, or an engine cracked. It offers adventure, travel, excitement, brilliant people, and that academic part of law.”

Nowadays, however, Andrew’s focus if firmly on Africa’s future. For decades the continent’s economic story has often been told through what lies beneath the ground, whether oil and gas or minerals and metals. Increasingly, however, Africa’s success may depend not simply on what it possesses, but on how effectively it connects those resources to markets, industries, and consumers.

Before Africa can trade more, industrialise more or prosper more, it must move more. And that, Andrew believes, is where the real game change lies.