Evaluating Critical Factors to the Implementation of Single Window System (SWS) in the Case of Abidjan Port - from Stakeholders' Perspectives

Abstract

In West Africa, international and sub-regional trade costs are widely recognised as major disincentives to shippers, stunting economic development. In fact, West African ports suffer from inefficient customs and port operations, especially when it comes to clearance procedures. The West African ports are turning to Single Window System (SWS) as a solution to these challenges, but they are finding it difficult to implement fully paperless SWS. Despite its benefits, the SWS implementation is a very complex and costly undertaking that requires great efforts, cost, a change of mindset, and most importantly, political will from the government.
Therefore, this study explores the critical factors influencing the implementation process of SWS in developing countries using the port of Abidjan as a case study. This culminates in a proposed framework developed based on existing literature, company documents and theories. It was then revised using qualitative-empirical data from semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants from fourteen different public and private stakeholders. Thematic analysis was used as a commonly used method for analysing semi-structured interviews.
This study evaluates the criticality and map SWS critical factors with key stakeholders at every implementation stage. The result of this study shows that, the criticalities of the critical factors influencing SWS implementation differ per stakeholder. Furthermore, the findings have shown that while the technological context is important for the implementation of a SWS, the greatest challenges the authorities face can be attributed to the organizational and environmental context of the TOE framework. Therefore, the researcher has added two new subcategories to the organizational and environmental context of the TOE framework to adapt it to SWS implementation.
This has significant practical implication to decision makers from developing countries and scholars, allowing them to prioritise their actions to reduce the impact of challenges as they implement the SWS.

Date of Award	2 Feb 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Portsmouth
Supervisor	Jana Ries (Supervisor) & Mark Xu (Supervisor)