Seaports play an important role in the economic integration of any port state even beyond the vital role they play in international trade and maritime transport by offering harbors for the safe berthing of ships that call on them. But for a port to be viable, it needs to know its clients and inter alia; their geographical locations in order to serve them well. The port must therefore, segment its hinterlands so that it will be able to do a thorough analysis of the needs of such hinterlands in order to improve port efficiency and to avoid cargo shifting to other neighboring ports. In doing this segmentation it is imperative to use quantitative analysis with a scientific theory model and method so that the reasonable hinterland of a particular port can be determined. Hinterland segmentation is defined in a scientific and rational manner after which port hinterland is described in a concise way, differentiating the different types of port hinterlands after which factors, which may determine the classification of port hinterlands, are also discussed. The gravitational model is thereafter, used to do an analysis of the hinterlands of the ports of Abidjan and Tema, both situated in the West African sub-region, then an empirical analysis is done based on the actual situation of the two ports under study.

1. Chan, W. Y. T., & Yip, T. L. (2011). Port spatial development and theory of constraints.
2. De Langen, P. W. (2007). Port competition and selection in contestable hinterlands; the case of Austria. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 7(1), 1-14.
3. Dong, J. S., & Fan, B. Q. (2002). Locational quotient used in the analyses of port Hinterland. Journal of Shanghai Maritime University, (3), 50-53.
4. Hayuth, Y. (1988). Rationalization and deconcentration of the US container port system. The Professional Geographer, 40(3), 279-288. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0033-0124.1988.00279.x
5. Jie, W., & Huaqiang, Z. (2009, May). Analysis on hinterland segmentation in port project. In Engineering Computation, 2009. ICEC’09. International Conference on (pp. 84-88). IEEE.
6. Jinfong, Z. J. W. (1990). The simulation to divide the export oriented economic hinterland of Harbourg along the Big Bohai Bay of China [J]. Geographical Research, 2, 013.
7. Kenyon, J. B. (1970). Elements in inter-port competition in the United States. Economic Geography, 46(1), 1-24. https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/142680
8. Mayer, H. M. (1900). The port of Chicago and the St. Lawrence Seaway. University of Chicago, Department of Geography.
9. Notteboom, T. (2008). The relationship between seaports and the intermodal hinterland in light of global supply chains: European challenges, JTRC OECD. ITF Discussion Paper 2008-10.
10. Patton, D. J. (1958). General cargo hinterlands of New York. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New.
11. Slack, B., & Starr, J. T. (1995). Ports as gateways: A traditional concept revisited. Paper presented in 5 ÈME Conférence Internationale Villes et Ports, AIVP, Dakar, November (pp. 89-96).
12. Wang, J., & Liu, P. (2010, December). The study of port hinterland segmentation based on Newton Model. Paper presented in Information Science and Engineering (ICISE), 2010 2nd International Conference on (pp. 788-791). IEEE.
13. Wang, J., Yang, Z., & Lu, C. F. (2005). Two new methods for partitioning port Hinterland. Navigation of China, (3), 57-61.
14. Ying R., & Yuan C. J. (1999). Fuzzy evaluation model for regional container hub port. Journal of Dalian Maritime University.

Ago, T. E., & Yang, H., (2015). Hinterland demarcation between two west african ports. International Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 1(4), 173-178.