Location preference of Egyptian firms for logistics hub in Southeast Africa

The distribution role within the logistics system has a vital function as it now plays a major part in the success of many different operations within the organisations' supply chains. This paper aims to present the major factors that Egyptian firms consider important when they decide the locations of their Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs), and to identify the gaps that the Egyptian government must fill to increase the Egyptian exports to the region in order to achieve its pronounced goal of building a successful regional logistics hub. The research follows an exploratory approach that implements a case study technique (Egyptian exports in Southeast African region) which allows the researcher to employ three complementary methods: a careful review and summary of relevant literatures, a location decision criteria model, and a structured questionnaire of Egyptian logistics managers. There was not a single firm in the research sample that has established a highly consolidated distribution centre that can serve the entire African market. This is because the need to localise outweighs the benefits of a single centre. The idea of distributing the Egyptian exports is based on the idea that Egypt is the central supplier which would deliver the exports to main RDC in the region that have been selected based on certain criteria to meet the objectives of implementing the RDC concept. The results from the analysis indicate that Egyptian firms generally prefer Kenya as consolidated RDC among Southeast African countries. This research draws the attention of academics towards the development of tools that can help organisations in selecting the optimal location for RDCs. Furthermore it brings the significance of the distribution principles roles in strengthening the supply chains operations on both the domestic and global scales. The research has modelled the required changes to make the Egyptian firms trade flows to the Southeast African region available and competitive in order to meet the African customer's needs, as the Egyptian firms has remarkable potentials to penetrate that market through a readjusting their supply chains.