Three African flags stand out this year for their extraordinary growth. The registries of Gabon, the Comoro Islands and Guinea-Bissau have each more than doubled in size in 2024 so far, taking on a significant tranche of the so-called shadow tanker fleet in the process.
Gabon, a small Central African nation on the Atlantic coast, was last year’s fastest-growing shipping registry, a growth trajectory that was boosted in the opening weeks of 2024 with the reflagging of a swathe of the Sovcomflot fleet.
Latest data from Clarksons Research (see chart below) shows Gabon is now the 30th largest shipping register in the world and the second largest in Africa with 7.4m gt on its books and has grown by 138.4% in the first quarter of this year alone. A month prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 26 months ago, the African nation had just 0.8m gt registered.
Among the ships on Gabon’s books was the Pablo, a 1997-built aframax that exploded in Malaysian waters killing three crewmembers in May last year. The destroyed, uninsured ship, with a history of hauling Iranian oil, was one of the shipping images of 2023, a stark reminder of the risks associated with the dark tanker fleet.
The flag of the Comoro Islands, meanwhile, has grown by 109% so far this year, but in percentage terms, the fastest grower has been Guinea-Bissau, a West African register that had no ships on its books when Russia went to war but has grown by 333.8% in the year-to-date with Turkish owners among key clients.
In early 2022, Pireaus-based G-B International was appointed to run the open registry of Guinea-Bissau. The registry also has an office in Lebanon.
Another African nation making shipping headlines this year has been Eswatini, the landlocked southern African kingdom formerly known as Swaziland. The Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry was formed as a private company in Singapore late last year. The International Maritime Organization has since listed a number of vessels that paid to flag with the African nation as ‘False Eswatini’.
