Dubai Ports World (DP World) will invest 534 million U.S. dollars in West Africa's Senegal to upgrade the port of its capital Dakar and build a container terminal, local newspaper Gulf News reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the Dubai-based company has won a 25- year concession from the Senegalese government to manage the port facilities. It will be DP World's biggest port investment commitment in Africa.

DP World will invest about 134 million dollars to expand the capacity of the container terminal of the Port of Dakar to 550,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent container units) in the project's first phase, which will be completed by 2010.

In the second phase, the company will spend 400 million dollars to build a new container terminal whose capacity will be 1.5 million TEUs. The new terminal will be operational in early 2011.

DP World is also building a container terminal worth 300 million dollars in Djibouti, which will open in late 2008 and create a transshipment hub in the East African country.

Established in 1999 and owned by the government of Dubai, DP World currently operates 42 terminals spanning 22 countries. Its total throughput hit 42 million TEUs in 2006.

Source: Xinhua