African Ports Invest in Cruise Terminals as Tourism Strategy

Durban’s Point Waterfront has a cruise terminal that did not exist five years ago. Zanzibar is racing to finish one at Maruhubi to replace an overworked ferry dock at Malindi. Kenya already operates a dedicated cruise berth at Mombasa, something Tanzania’s much larger port at Dar es Salaam still does not have, which forces ships calling there to dock wherever space allows. Senegal, for its part, is pouring concrete on a $1.13 billion port complex 50 kilometres from Dakar that will eventually handle passengers as well as cargo.

Across the continent, port authorities are treating cruise terminal investment as shorthand for a much larger ambition: making the African Union’s tourism strategy for 2030 look less like a wish list. That strategy, folded into Agenda 2063 and the African Tourism Strategic Framework, promised a doubling of 2013-level intra-regional travel and 134 million annual arrivals by the end of the decade.

Cruise Terminal Investment Across Africa’s Ports

Durban’s terminal opened in December 2021 after roughly R200 million (upward of $15 million) in construction, and it is now owned and run by KwaZulu Cruise Terminals, a purpose-built passenger facility rather than a repurposed cargo shed. It sits inside a port absorbing a far larger transformation: a masterplan estimated at $7 billion over a decade, aimed at lifting Durban’s container capacity past 11 million TEUs by 2031. Cruise capacity, in other words, is riding on the back of freight capacity, a pattern repeated along much of the coastline.

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Zanzibar shows a different route: tourism-led investment paying for a maritime facility that also carries ferries and cargo. In February 2024, the Zanzibar Ports Corporation signed a concession agreement with ZF Devco, a Dutch-Tanzanian consortium, to design, finance, build and operate a new passenger terminal at Maruhubi. Authorities expect the ageing Malindi terminal to be fully retired by 2027, once the new facility opens.

Kenya offers the clearest evidence that dedicated cruise infrastructure pays for itself. Mombasa already has a purpose-built cruise terminal near an international airport; Dar es Salaam, its larger neighbour, does not, and ships calling there still dock at whichever berth happens to be free. Kenya’s tourism earnings rose from KES 377.49 billion in 2023 to KES 452.20 billion in 2024, an increase of close to 20 per cent.

Senegal’s project sits further from tourism, but it shows how large the capital appetite has become. DP World’s $1.13 billion Ndayane development, 50 kilometres from Dakar, is being built in phases, starting with an 840-metre container quay and a five-kilometre marine channel. It is a cargo project first. But it belongs to the same wave of port capital that tourism boards now hope to redirect toward passenger terminals.

The RCA Argument:

What the AU’s 2030 Tourism Strategy Actually Promises

What the AU's 2030 Tourism Strategy Actually Promises

The African Union’s tourism ambitions were never limited to hotel beds and safari lodges. When ministers meeting in Nairobi in October 2018 endorsed a continental tourism framework under Agenda 2063, they tied it to five other flagship projects: the Single African Air Transport Market, the African Continental Free Trade Area, the Free Movement of Persons Protocol, a single African passport, and a continental high-speed rail network. UN Tourism’s Secretary-General told the same gathering that Africa was expected to host 134 million international arrivals a year by 2030, roughly double the 62 million recorded in 2017.

The African Tourism Strategic Framework 2019–2028, the AU’s working document behind that pledge, set two measurable targets: doubling 2013 levels of intra-regional tourism by 2023, and lifting tourism’s real contribution to GDP by 100%. Neither deadline was met on schedule; both targets simply rolled forward inside the broader 2030 horizon that now dominates AU communication.

UN Tourism folded its own Agenda for Africa into the same 2030 timeline, listing priorities that read like an inventory of everything cruise terminal investment is meant to fix: infrastructure, air connectivity, visa facilitation, traveller safety, human capital, and Africa’s image abroad. On paper, the strategy holds together: connect the continent by air and sea, remove the visa friction that keeps Africans from visiting each other, and let tourism revenue follow. The gap opens in delivery.

Cruise Terminal Investment Meets a Policy Gap

Africa’s tourism sector did recover. The continent recorded 74 million international arrivals in 2024, seven per cent above 2019 and 12 per cent above 2023, with receipts of $42.6 billion accounting for 41 per cent of Africa’s total service exports, the highest such share of any world region. That is real growth. It is also 60 million arrivals short of the 134 million the AU set for 2030, with four years left to close a gap that took the continent seven years to narrow from 62 million to 74 million.

Visa policy, the piece of the strategy meant to make cross-border travel routine, has moved in the wrong direction. The 2025 Africa Visa Openness Report found that 28.2 per cent of intra-African travel routes are now visa-free, the highest share on record, but the share of routes requiring a visa arranged in advance rose from 47.1 per cent in 2024 to 51.1 per cent in 2025, pushed up by countries replacing visa-on-arrival systems with e-visas and electronic travel authorisation. A traveller booking a cruise that calls at three African ports can still need three separate visa applications.

Air connectivity tells a similar story. Thirty-eight countries have now joined the Single African Air Transport Market, supporting 124 routes flown by 113 airlines and carrying more than three million passengers. Yet, overall intra-African connectivity sits at just 23 per cent, eight years after SAATM’s 2018 launch. Industry analysts note that flying from Tunisia to southern Africa can still take more than 13 hours, longer than reaching Europe or the Middle East from either end.

Cruise infrastructure inherits every one of those gaps. A dedicated terminal at Mombasa means little to a passenger who cannot get a direct flight or a visa-free stopover to reach it, and Dar es Salaam’s lack of a purpose-built berth means ships already calling on East Africa’s coast simply skip the port serving the region’s largest urban market.

Turning the 2030 Strategy Into Something Real

Port authorities cannot rewrite visa policy, and tourism ministries cannot lay concrete. The 2030 strategy will stay aspirational for as long as those two tracks run separately.

Three shifts would close the distance. First, the AU needs to ratify and enforce the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons at the same pace it funds port infrastructure; a cruise terminal built ahead of visa reform serves foreign tourists first, not the intra-African travellers the strategy is supposed to double in number. Second, SAATM implementation has to move from signature to schedule: memoranda of implementation exist for 26 countries, but the AU and the African Civil Aviation Commission have not published binding timelines for the remaining signatories to remove bilateral restrictions under the Yamoussoukro Decision. Third, cruise and port authorities need a shared regional booking and clearance standard, so that a ship calling at Mombasa, Zanzibar and Durban does not push passengers through three unrelated immigration systems on a single itinerary.

Tourism has already attracted $6.6 billion in greenfield investment across more than 100 projects between 2019 and 2024, generating over 15,100 direct jobs, proof that capital backs African tourism when the return looks credible. The AU’s task now is to make mobility reform look just as credible to the same investors. None of the fixes above requires new capital on the scale of Durban’s $7 billion masterplan or Senegal’s $1.13 billion Ndayane project. They require the African Union to treat the Continental Tourism Strategy as an infrastructure programme with a mobility clause attached, rather than a mobility ambition with an infrastructure appendix.

The real test for the AU’s Continental Tourism Strategy will not be how many terminals open before 2030. It will be whether a Namibian traveller can book a single itinerary through Cape Town, Walvis Bay and Zanzibar without three visas, two airlines that will not talk to each other, and a port authority that has never coordinated with the one next door. Until that traveller exists, the strategy is a shipping schedule with a target year attached.

Africa’s tourism strategy is being tested in real time, port by port and policy by policy. Read Rex Clarke Adventure’s ongoing coverage of the infrastructure, aviation and visa reforms shaping how the continent moves and see which destinations are actually closing the gap between promise and practice.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) And Answers

What is the African Union’s Continental Tourism Strategy for 2030?

It is the AU’s plan, built into Agenda 2063 and the African Tourism Strategic Framework 2019-2028, to double intra-regional tourism from 2013 levels and lift annual arrivals to roughly 134 million by 2030, using tools such as the Single African Air Transport Market and the Free Movement of Persons Protocol.

Why are African ports investing in cruise terminals now?

Cruise tourism generates direct revenue and international visibility without requiring the visa and airline reforms that intra-African travel still needs, making it one of the fastest ways for a port city to show progress toward the AU’s tourism goals.

Has the AU met its 2030 tourism targets so far?

Not yet. Africa recorded 74 million international arrivals in 2024, well below the 134 million target, and only 28.2 per cent of intra-African travel routes are visa-free, according to the 2025 Africa Visa Openness Report.

How does the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) affect cruise tourism?

SAATM is the AU’s plan to liberalise African skies so airlines can fly freely between member states. Cruise terminals depend on connecting flights to bring passengers to port, so SAATM’s slow rollout, 23 per cent overall connectivity as of 2026, limits what cruise investment alone can achieve.

Which African ports currently have dedicated cruise terminals? Durban and Cape Town in South Africa and Mombasa in Kenya operate dedicated cruise terminals. Zanzibar’s is under construction at Maruhubi, while Dar es Salaam, East Africa’s larger port, still has no purpose-built cruise facility.