Cape Town has the worst port in the world

The port of Cape Town has been ranked as the worst in the world, with Durban moving off the bottom of the table due to interventions to improve its efficiency.

Cape Town found itself ranked 400th according to the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) compiled by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence for 2025. 

The index is based on observed vessel time in port, with it effectively measuring the turnaround time for container ships entering 400 ports around the world. 

In particular, it measures how long container ships spend in port. This combines the effects of access, berth availability, cargo handling, and coordination. 

Crucially, the World Bank and S&P rely solely on actual vessel data rather than self-reported indicators. It has become the established benchmark for comparing port efficiency around the world. 

The World Bank said that global port performance in 2025 generally deteriorated compared with the previous year as turnaround times extended. 

However, this overall trend covers up significant variations around the world, with particular regions continuing to underperform. 

Ports in upper-middle-income and high-income countries generally achieved shorter turnaround times due to better infrastructure maintenance and development. 

As with previous rankings, ports in East and South Asia dominated the best around the world, while some European and North American ports showed signs of improvement. 

Chinese ports, in particular, dominated the rankings, with the country having six of the ten best-performing ports in the world, including the top two. 

The Middle East also had a strong showing, with ports from Oman and Qatar being in the top ten. Morocco’s Tanger Med was the only African port in the top 10. 

These ports have the ability to minimise what the World Bank calls “time absorption”. This means they limit unproductive waiting or queuing time. 

On the other end of the spectrum, ports in Sub-Saharan Africa continued to perform poorly. 

The World Bank said these ports are characterised by capacity constraints and import-dominated trade structures. This translates into longer turnaround times. 

Cape Town propping up the table

South Africa’s ports found themselves on the other side of the ranking, with the country having two of the least efficient ports in the world. 

The worst of these is Cape Town, which took last place in the rankings after Durban’s strong improvement to 398th place. 

Ranked 400th, Cape Town was highlighted by the World Bank as a prime example of how structural decline can crush a port’s efficiency. 

The World Bank saw this example as particularly instructive given global demand cycles throughout 2025, which would have normally seen the port’s performance improve relative to its peers. 

As commodity prices rose, greater demand was expected to see other poorly-performing ports in emerging markets become less efficient. 

However, Cape Town’s port was hit with a near-perfect storm in 2025 as poor weather exacerbated the port’s declining infrastructure quality. 

Extreme weather events combined with unreliable equipment to create high variability in the time ships spend in port. 

This happened during periods when broader global supply chain stress was easing, the World Bank noted. 

Cape Town’s port also saw a decline in berth utilisation, meaning vessels spent more time accumulating delays outside of productive operations. 

The World Bank’s data showed that vessels only spent 56% of their hours in Cape Town at berth, meaning that nearly half of their time was spent waiting to be serviced. 

Transnet has implemented several interventions to improve the situation at Cape Town’s port, with a particular focus on its resilience and efficiency. 

Key among these is a predictive wind model developed alongside the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to reduce weather-related disruptions. 

This will be coupled with a helicopter piloting service designed to improve ship access during periods of high swells. 

Durban, in stark contrast to Cape Town, was ranked as the leading port globally for year-on-year improvement. Its score improved by 479 points. 

This was on the back of strong interventions from Transnet, with vessel waiting times reducing from 20 vessels to zero in 2025. The World Bank attributed this improvement to equipment recovery and management reforms.

In contrast to Cape Town, Durban saw an improvement in productive anchorage, with the share of time vessels spent at berth increasing to 76%. 

The table below shows the ten worst ports in the world according to the CPPI ranking. 

Here are the ten lowest-ranked ports in the world out of the 400 evaluated in the 2025 Container Port Performance Index (CPPI). A negative CPPI score indicates that a port’s vessel turnaround times are slower than the global average.

Global Rank	Port	Territory	2025 CPPI Score
400	Cape Town	South Africa	-302.6
399	Conakry	Guinea	-275.9
398	Durban	South Africa	-241.7
397	Rijeka	Croatia	-238.9
396	Mombasa	Kenya	-231.5
395	Kribi Deep Sea Port	Cameroon	-216.5
394	Suape	Brazil	-215.0
393	Acajutla	El Salvador	-207.6
392	Genova	Italy	-205.3
391	Pointe-Noire	Congo, Republic of	-191.0