It is no doubt that Mombasa sea port in Kenya is one of the most important sea ports in East Africa. We used this port to deliver goods not only to Kenya, but to the landlocked countries like Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Somalia., and in some cases to Congo (DRC). The regular route from Egypt to Mombasa has been interrupted due to many shipping lines, had to sail around Africa to reach Mombasa. Giving an example for this is that it took the Maersk some 15 to 18 days to reach Mombasa from Egypt via Salalah, which is NOW estimated at around 45 to 50 days as they already abandoned the red sea, and are circumnavigating the African Continent. This in a way or another has affected exports of fresh produce to East Africa from Egypt, as it is very hard to ship, for example, grapes for 47 days. Alternatively, the CMA is operating vessels from Sokhna port in Egypt, along with Unifeeder, while transit time also extends to 30 days, and in some instances transit extends to 35 or 37 or 40 days depending on the congestion or the over all operation in the Jebal Ali port as they take this port as a trans-shipment point for shipping to Mombasa. The solution to get out of this situation,, and until the major shipping lines return to regular sailing via red sea, I suggest that we operate just 2 small size container ships ( average 1200 to 1800 TEU ) to operate from any Egyptian sea port directly to Mombasa. The distance is estimated at 3000 NM from Alexandria, which a ship may traverse this distance over some 10 to 11 days sailing at a speed of 14kn. This transit time may be reduced by further 2 days should a ship sail from Sokhna port that is overlooking the Gulf of Suez at the end of the North West arm of the red sea. continue..... Will it be economical to operate a vessel on this route? will there be a need to add any port in route ? like Jeddah as good volumes of fresh produce and other items are exported from Egypt to Saudi Arabia? Will there be a need to extend voyage route further to Dar El-Salam in Tanzania after calling on Mombasa ? how about return ? or it need to take enough loads from Egypt to compensate for the possible empty return from Mombasa? these points will be addressed in the coming lines. To continue ..... Egyptian owned or flagged container ship will sail through south of red sea heading to East Africa without problems. Let's see the different 3 possibilities for route of the proposed container ship.