Port Alfred Eastern Cape

Port Alfred is A growing commercial and residential town about a 2-hour drive from both Port Elizabeth and East London and about a one hour drive from Grahmstown. English settlers founded Port Alfred as a fishing village in the early 1820s, where the Kowie River meets South Africa’s Sunshine Coast. In 1839, William Cock and George Hodgkinson started to block the natural river mouth to the east and canalize the present opening to the sea. By 1841 South Africa’s first man-made harbor was opened after completion of the stone-lined channel between the ocean and the Kowie river.^[4] This allowed high-masted sailing ships with their heavy cargo to dock at the wharf. Port Alfred’s town center is gradually becoming busy and alive as new businesses and industries open up. The population of port Alfred just under 26000 currently, is slowly growing as people have been finding new ways of work and sources of Income.