China–Africa tea shipping times, port by port

Sea freight from China to North and West Africa takes about three to four and a half weeks of sailing on the shortest route. On the distances of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a ship at an assumed steady 18 to 14 knots needs 21.6 to 27.8 days from Shanghai to Casablanca through the Suez Canal, and 23.9 to 31.2 days to Cotonou, Lomé, Tema or Abidjan round the Cape of Good Hope (The Tea Trade’s calculation). Since the Red Sea diversions began in December 2023, the canal has carried less than a fifth of its 2023 container tonnage in 2024 and 2025, and 43% of its 2023 monthly average in September 2026 (IMF PortWatch; The Tea Trade’s calculation), and at those speeds going round the Cape adds about 8 to 14 days at sea for North African ports. Real services take longer still, with port calls and transhipment: in 2025 the Tanger Med Port Authority listed 29 to 58 days from Shanghai to Tanger Med.

Sea distances from China to North and West Africa

NGA’s Pub. 151, Distances Between Ports (11th edition, 2001), gives distances in nautical miles (simply “miles” below) over the routes that afford the safest passage, most of them the shortest navigable ones. Long routes are built from junction points where shipping lanes converge. This guide routes a ship from the China coast through the Singapore junction point, then either across the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to Port Said or round the Cape of Good Hope:

• China to Singapore: 2,207 miles from Shanghai, 1,817 from Lo-hsing-ta Mao-ti, the anchorage 9 miles below Fuzhou on the Min river, and 1,649 from Xiamen. Pub. 151 does not list Ningbo.
• Singapore to the Mediterranean: 5,035 miles to Port Said through the Suez Canal, then 1,943 to the Strait of Gibraltar or 1,514 to Algiers.
• Singapore to the Atlantic: 5,579 miles to the Cape of Good Hope, then 5,082 to the Strait of Gibraltar, 3,610 to Dakar, 2,712 to Abidjan, 2,619 to Tema and 2,560 to Cotonou.

Adding the legs gives the distance from Shanghai to each port (Table 1). The shorter route changes along the coast. For Algiers, Tanger Med and Casablanca the canal saves 3,376 to 4,549 miles, for Nouakchott 1,520 and for Dakar 724. From Abidjan eastwards the Cape is shorter, by 1,343 miles for Abidjan. From Xiamen, subtract 558 miles; from Fuzhou, 390.

Sailing days by destination port

Sailing time is distance divided by speed. At 16 knots a ship covers 16 × 24 = 384 miles a day, so Shanghai to Casablanca through the canal takes 9,351 ÷ 384 = 24.4 days. No single speed applies: the World Bank’s container port index notes that ships can slow down between calls when port stays are short, and must speed up to recover unplanned hours in port. In a peer-reviewed study of slow steaming, 24 knots is a typical “full” speed for a container ship, 21 knots is “slow” steaming, 18 knots “extra slow” and 15 knots “super slow” (Maloni, Paul and Gligor, 2013). Table 1 uses a band of 18 to 14 knots, from extra slow steaming to just below super slow: this guide’s own assumption, not a published average.

Table 1. Sea distance and sailing time from Shanghai, by destination port (distances: NGA Pub. 151; days at an assumed 18 to 14 knots: The Tea Trade’s calculation)

Pub. 151 has no entry for Tanger Med, so its row uses the Strait of Gibraltar junction point (35°57′N, 5°45′W). Pub. 151 gives no Cape distance for Casablanca or Lomé: the Casablanca range lies between its figures for El Jadida and Mohammedia, the ports on either side, and the Lomé row uses Aného, 22 minutes of longitude east of Lomé. For Cotonou, the 2,560 miles are the figure in Pub. 151’s Cape of Good Hope table; Cotonou’s own entry prints 857 miles, which is inconsistent with that table and with the neighbouring ports (Aného 2,615, Tema 2,619). Through the Sunda Strait instead of Singapore, Pub. 151’s Cape route from Shanghai is 87 miles shorter.

Sources: NGA, Pub. 151 Distances Between Ports (2001); calculation in this guide

Suez or the Cape: the Red Sea diversions since December 2023

UNCTAD said in September 2025 that geopolitical tensions affecting the Red Sea “have forced costly rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope”. IMF PortWatch, which counts ship transits from AIS position data, dates the shift: container ship transits through the Suez Canal fell from 584 in November 2023 to 285 in January 2024, while those round the Cape rose from 169 to 527.

The diversion has lasted. Averaging PortWatch’s daily counts, 9.1 container ships a day used the canal from 1 January to 4 October 2026, against 19.1 in 2023, and 19.6 a day rounded the Cape, against 6.2 (The Tea Trade’s calculation). Of the container cargo that PortWatch estimates passed through the canal or round the Cape, the canal’s share was 82% in 2023, 13% in 2025 and 34% in September 2026, when 13.4 million tonnes went through it: more than twice its 2025 monthly average, but 43% of its 2023 one (The Tea Trade’s calculation).

Source: IMF PortWatch, daily chokepoint transit calls (2019 to 4 October 2026)

For tea, the effect depends on the port. Round the Cape, Tanger Med is 3,683 miles further from Shanghai, 8.5 to 11.0 more days at the assumed 18 to 14 knots; Algiers is 4,549 miles further (10.5 to 13.5 days), Casablanca about 3,380 (7.8 to 10.1 days), Nouakchott 1,520 (3.5 to 4.5 days) and Dakar 724 (1.7 to 2.2 days) (The Tea Trade’s calculation). Ports on the Gulf of Guinea are unaffected, since the Cape is their shorter route anyway. Of the seven Shanghai–Tanger Med services listed by the port authority in 2025, the one marked as sailing through the Suez Canal took 29 days, the shortest of the seven.

Transhipment hubs and real schedules

Computed days assume one ship sailing non-stop. Liner services call at several ports on the way, and a container may change ship at a hub. The Tanger Med Port Authority’s 2025 booklet of maritime connections gives each weekly service’s scheduled transit time: from Shanghai, seven services take 29 to 58 days to Tanger Med (median 37), and from Ningbo, five take 27 to 55 days (median 38). Over Pub. 151’s 9,185 miles, the Suez service’s 29 days are an average of 13.2 knots, port calls included (9,185 ÷ (29 × 24); The Tea Trade’s calculation).

Tanger Med handled 10.24 million TEU in 2024, according to the port authority’s annual report as cited by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), which also reports that transhipment made up 47.9% of the cargo handled by Morocco’s ports that year. The booklet lists weekly links to more than 180 ports in 70 countries, including every destination port in this guide except Algiers.

Table 2. Scheduled transit time from Tanger Med to North and West African ports, 2025 (source: Tanger Med Port Authority)

Add the time a container waits at the hub for its connection, which the booklet does not give. The World Bank’s port index shows both patterns among its sample sea legs on Africa trades: Hong Kong–Tema for ships of 5,000 to 8,500 TEU, sailing direct from Asia, and Algeciras–Tema, from southern Spain, for ships of 1,500 to 5,000 TEU. West Africa has hubs of its own. MOFCOM’s 2025 country guides (对外投资合作国别（地区）指南) describe Lomé as West Africa’s only natural deep-water port, and Cotonou as one of the region’s main re-export ports, serving Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, with 60% to 70% of its imports moving on to Nigeria.

Time in port at each end

The World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) measures the total time a container ship spends in port, from arrival at the port limits or anchorage to departure from the berth. Its 2023 edition, published in 2024, ranks 405 ports and breaks port time down by region: the average port call lasted 40.5 hours in 2023; in sub-Saharan African ports, ships took an average of 29.7 hours just to get from arrival to the berth, against 9.1 hours worldwide.

Table 3. Destination ports: what they handle and their CPPI rank (sources: MOFCOM 2025 country guides; World Bank, CPPI 2023, Table E.1, and CPPI 2025, Annex 2)

Chinese ports rank far higher: the 2023 table puts Yangshan 1st, Ningbo 12th, Xiamen 31st, Fuzhou 38th and Shanghai 116th. Ranks move from year to year. In September 2025 the World Bank named Dakar among the ports with noteworthy improvements between 2020 and 2024, and its sixth edition, published in June 2026 with 2025 data, puts Dakar 144th of 400 ports.

Clearing the tea takes time too. In Ghana, cargo not cleared within 21 days (60 days for vehicles) is forfeited to the State under section 53 of the Customs Act, 2015 (Act 891), then valued and gazetted for public auction, Ghana’s customs division said in a statement published by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority in February 2021.

Inland legs to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger

Tea for the Sahel continues from the coast by road or rail. MOFCOM’s 2025 guides put Bamako 1,270 km by road from Dakar and 1,115 km from Abidjan, its two main routes; Ouagadougou 1,145 km by rail from Abidjan, while the road through Pô to Ghana is Burkina Faso’s main route for imports and exports; and Niamey 1,245 km by road from Lomé. The guides to Mali and Niger, in files dated April and February 2026, describe two links as out of use: the Dakar–Bamako railway, halted since May 2018, and the 1,060 km road from Cotonou to Niamey, unusable because the Niger–Benin border, closed after 26 July 2023, had not reopened. Abidjan’s transit cargo for Mali and Burkina Faso is covered in our Côte d’Ivoire tea imports guide, and the routes, transit rules and border status in our guide to Sahel tea trade corridors. Transit to Chad is covered in our guide to Cameroon and Chad tea imports.

Before you book: what to check

• The route. Ask whether the service sails through the Suez Canal or round the Cape: for Algiers, Tanger Med and Casablanca the difference is about 8 to 14 days at sea at 18 to 14 knots. Who books the freight, and so chooses the service, follows from the Incoterm (tea Incoterms and landed cost).
• Direct or transhipped. Ask for the hub and the connecting service. From Tanger Med alone, scheduled legs to the ports in this guide took 1 to 16 days in 2025.
• The loading port. Xiamen and Fuzhou are 558 and 390 miles nearer Singapore than Shanghai, 0.9 to 1.7 days at 18 to 14 knots.
• Arrival. Allow for waiting time at the port of discharge and for clearance: in Ghana, cargo still uncleared after 21 days is forfeited to the State.
• The tea. Four to eight weeks, roughly the range of the Tanger Med schedules from China, is a long time in a closed box: see keeping tea fresh in transit and, on condensation in containers, tea container capacity.

Distances, schedules and rankings in this guide were checked in October 2026.