South Africa is at risk of being left behind as its neighbours ramp up port and corridor development and rapidly reduce their dependence on the Southern African powerhouse’s trade routes.

With continued infrastructure-led growth, the changing dynamics in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region will accelerate at South Africa’s expense if it does not “shape up”, with new key corridors diverting trade away and subverting the country’s attempts to cling to the long-lost status of 'gateway to Africa'.

South Africa was stagnating, and with the rapid changes outside the country, the rest of the SADC region was becoming less and less dependent on the southern-most African country as the years passed, Africa-focused consultancy Africa House director Duncan Bonnett commented at a Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry business breakfast on Wednesday.

Currently, around 53% of regional trade by value originates in, and 29% is destined for, South Africa, and, while there is still a high reliance on South Africa’s seas and roads, this will change as infrastructure spend grows and the region’s own key transport corridors are unlocked.

“There is an understanding in most countries [of the need for] and a desire to get a bigger slice of the pie, and that slice of the pie is going to be at our [South Africa’s] expense, every time,” he said.

Infrastructure spend in sub-Saharan Africa will grow by 10% a year over the next decade, exceeding $180-billion by 2025, and while Nigeria and South Africa currently dominate in this spend, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania are doing good work to catch up.

Mozambique and Tanzania are direct competitors to South Africa for goods coming into the landlocked regions of Southern Africa and southern Central Africa, with Kenya also increasingly closing the competitive gap.

“It really is starting to change the dynamics,” Bonnett pointed out, noting that every shipment that does not route through South Africa meant that the suppliers were left “out of the loop”, with a constant knock-on effect.

Further, the region will spend increasing amounts of funding on utility infrastructure, with investment to rise by 10.4% between now and 2025.

Walvis Bay, in Namibia, is fast becoming a transit point for suppliers into the Copperbelt, Botswana and Zimbabwe, while the Lobito Corridor could reroute significant volumes of trade, such as copper, cement, chemicals and fuels away from South Africa and to Angola.

There is also an opportunity to use Beira, in Mozambique, as an exit for the Copperbelt, surpassing South Africa completely.

The Walvis Bay port development, being promoted as the preferred access to the SADC region, is a rising star, offering port efficiencies, good road networks, security, efficient borders and minimal corruption, with the full backing of government, said Freight and Trading Weekly Africa correspondent Ed Richardson.

“Durban is no longer the only game in town,” he said, pointing to several developments across the region that now offer more port, supplier, service provider and transport corridor choices.

“We are now being challenged right in our heartland by foreign competition,” Bonnett added, referring to the opening up of the Southern and East African regions to international trade, away from access via South African and away from South African supply.

As the key SADC corridors are aligned and open to major development growth nodes and resource hotspots, with the attached government demands for local suppliers and more cost-effective imports, the pressure will be on South Africa to compete effectively.

“We are losing market share in our key regions, down from 34% in 2010 to 26% in 2014, with a slight recovery in 2015,” he said.

Increasingly, the developers of resource projects are demanding that suppliers are already on site or the requirements locally sourced, meaning that servicing from South Africa is increasingly less likely.

A South African company establishing an actual presence in key markets may prove to be an advantage.

“As these corridors open up and as the focus is removed from South Africa, we need to reintensify our efforts. You can no longer just rely on the fact that other Africans know South Africans.”

“Unless we can start to compete, it doesn’t look that good for us,” Bonnett noted.

South African companies need to take a longer-term strategic view of the region, develop a local presence and integrate their operations into key development nodes in the face of growing international competition in sub-Saharan Africa.