Autonomous Port of Abidjan

The Autonomous Port of Abidjan is a commercial port at Treichville, in southern Abidjan, Ivory Coast. It is a transshipment and intermodal facility and is managed as a public industrial and commercial establishment; the Director-General is Hien Sié.

The Port of Abidjan opened in 1951 after the development of the Vridi Canal, which enables deep-sea ships to use the port. It is the most important port in West Africa and the second most important in Africa after the Port of Durban. It is a major contributor to the economy of Ivory Coast, and the greater part of the external trade of landlocked countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Guinea also passes through it.

The port conforms to the ISPS code. It offers a variety of related services, refining and industrial processing facilities. The leading companies operating at the port are SDV-SAGA (which employs over 4,000 people), SETV Terminal Operating Company Vridi, Sitarail and SIMAT.

The coast of Ivory Coast had been an important site of commerce since the 15th century, with maritime traffic using the ocean lagoons as open roadsteads. During the French colonial period, wharves were constructed, the first two at Grand-Bassam in 1897 and 1923, a third at Port-Bouët in 1931, and a fourth at Sassandra in 1951.

Increasing traffic and the difficulty of handling large indivisible cargoes led to planning for the creation of a deep-water port. Beginning in 1892, Grand-Lahou, Grand-Bassam, Sassandra and Bingerville were all studied as possible locations. In 1898, a French mission including Charles François Maurice Houdaille, Captain Thomasset and Robert Wallace Crosson-Duplessis visited Ivory Coast to select the location for the port, which would also be the terminus of a projected railway (what became the Chemin de Fer Abidjan-Niger). Among the factors leading to their choice of Abidjan were the existence of an offshore canyon and the fact that Abidjan was on the shortest route between Bamako and the Atlantic.

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