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In the last three decades, transport economists and geographers have published an array of studies on port institutions and governance. Many of these publications emphasize the role of institutions in enabling or inhibiting port efficiencies, port competition (inter and intra) and the development of a ports resources and capabilities. Political instability and their consequential economic lags have to some extent misaligned the pace of institutional reforms in Southern African ports compared with ports in the developed world. Some ports in this region (South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Mauritius and Madagascar) have, however, over the last 10 years begun to follow the port reformation trend and as such undergone various degrees of institutional reform. Given Southern Africas importance (the regions constitutes 41% of the entire continents container throughput), this study seeks to provide a detailed case study which:  Discloses a holistic overview of recent and on-going institutional reforms of Southern African ports.  Provides understanding to what extent institutional structures have shaped and mediated port development in Southern Africa Southern African ports effectively present a unique case of mixed port institutional development trends compared to that of developed regions of the world. As such, this case study reinforces the fact that different port institutional structures do matter in port competition and that institutional reform has supported port development to varying degrees.

The past decade has brought significant growth at, and competition between regional gateway ports and intermediate hub container ports in Southern Africa. Corridors are the essential link between these ports and continental hinterlands. Capacity expansions of seaport and corridor networks (resources), in conjunction with efficient transport services/operations (capabilities) are important to guarantee the attractiveness of a port-corridor combination. An assessment of the important and attractive corridor resources and capabilities will identify the corridors key strengths and weaknesses. The results of such an assessment ultimately will guide stakeholders towards critical focus areas of the corridor requiring intervention. This is especially applicable to ports and corridors in developing countries pursuing growth. Currently, little empirical research exists which assesses the attractiveness of a corridor in a given port system. This paper focuses on two Southern African container gateway port corridors (Natcor, and Southcor Corridors), all contesting the same continental hinterland, namely, Guateng. By means of a corridor stakeholder survey, this study merges the corporate strategy concept of resource and capability appraisal, together with various theoretical principles of corridor attractiveness. This adapted resource and capability corridor appraisal model applied to the case in question presents an empirical framework resulting in the identification of each corridors (1) key strengths, (2) key weaknesses and (3) the competitive rank assessment of the corridor in the container port system. Furthermore, from the survey results, the model also identifies which criteria on corridor attractiveness are actually deemed important for supply and demand stakeholders relative to the current theoretical assumptions of corridor attractiveness.

The past decade has seen significant competition and cooperation between regional port gateways, hub and intermediate hub container ports. New ports entering the market and existing ports expanding their handling capacity have also intensified the competitive dynamics between corridors linking ports to continental hinterlands. The knowledge of the competitive position ranking of a corridor, together with the characteristics which make a corridor competitive can provide stakeholders with appropriate strategies/action plans of how to increase a corridors attractiveness and improve/maintain the corridors competitive position. Currently, little empirical research exists for assessing the competitive position of a corridor in a given port system based on best practice corridor theoretical principals. This paper focuses on regional hinterland competitive dynamics in container port corridor supply chain nodes. The study combines the corporate strategy concept of resource and capability appraisal (Grant, 2009), together with various theoretical principles of corridor attractiveness. The objective of the adapted resource and capability corridor appraisal achieves the goal of developing a sound and empirical framework for a competitive rank assessment of competing corridors in a given container port system. The proposed methodological framework serve as the theoretical foundation for a planned empirical application to assess the competitiveness of rail corridors in southern Africa. As such, the paper contributes to advancing and broadening the methodological discussion on corridors and hinterland port system competitiveness and development.