The Port at the Edge: Corporate Logistics and the Recalibration of Sovereignty in West Africa

This article examines the volatile relationship between corporate logistics and state sovereignty in Lomé’s transformation from colonial harbor to global transshipment hub. Focusing on concession contracts and vertically integrated shipping conglomerates, it argues that privatized container terminals do not simply erode state power but rearticulate it through enclave-like regimes of operational governance. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, it shows how the port becomes a chokepoint where control over circulation is a key site of rent extraction, political negotiation, and labor contestation, as state and corporate actors continually enable, constrain, and renegotiate one another.