Becoming a regional gateway by developing logistics hubs: A blessing or a curse?

Abstract

Many developing countries wish to become the “gateway” to a region or part of a continent. One strategy involves encouraging logistics cluster development. These support global supply chains and enable the growth of the host country through the resulting trade as well as providing direct and indirect employment opportunities during the build and subsequent operation of the hub. Namibia has a desire to become the gateway to southern Africa and the SADC region. This paper builds on research on Caribbean cluster potential (Lambourdiere et al, 2012), and Namibian logistics (Jenkins et al, 2012) to identify the potential benefits, drawbacks and risks of such a strategy.