How vessel ownership, sustainable blue economy, others top discourse at Maritime Administration Conference

Last Thursday and Friday, who is who from 34 African maritime nations, three non-African countries and other international organisations gathered in Abuja Nigeria to strategise on how Africans can up their game and increase their participation in the foreign dominated business of shipping and port.

During the 2-day event, issues such as how Africa can grow its ship and capacity registries to tap from the industry potential; building sustainable blue economy for food sufficiency and tackling maritime related crimes as well as the need to build human capacity through training of seafarers, dominated discussions. 

Apparently worried by the inability of African registered ships to benefit from the huge volume of trade currently taking place in many African nations, delegates at the just concluded third AAMA conference identified the need for maritime nations in African to grow local capacity through vessel acquisition to enable Africans participate in lifting cargoes leaving and coming to the continent.

The delegates, who spoke on the theme ‘Sustainable Use of Africa’s Oceans and Seas,’ pointed that shipping and port business can play significant role in job creation, prosperity and stability through promotion of maritime trade.

It was also noted that shipping and port business are wealth creators that have remained untapped by African nations. Trade contributes to the socio-economic development of all the countries on the African continent.

Concerns were raised among delegates as Kitack Lim, the secretary general of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), quoted the result of the 2016 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) review of maritime transport, which states that of the 35 top ship-owning countries in the world, which was approximately 95 percent of the world ship tonnage, none is an African country.

In the share of vessel ownership by country grouping, developing countries in Africa own only 1.23 percent while counterpart in Asia own 36.24 percent. Africa is also underperforming in the business of ship building as the continent represents only 0.9 percent of shipbuilding yards and marine equipment industries in the world, the IMO rep said while delivering his goodwill message.

Lim, who was represented by William Azuh, head, Africa (Anglophone) Section Technical Cooperation Division of IMO further stated that maritime transport is essential to world trade as over 80 percent of the volume of world merchandise trade is carried by sea, and an even higher percentage of developing-country trade is carried by ships.

Opportunities in shipping business, according to him, is based on the fact that industries such as maritime transport, offshore oil and gas, ports, renewable energy, fisheries, aquaculture, marine tourism and seabed mining rely on ocean to access their resources and services. These in turn generate other industries that are dependent on maritime activities, such as shipbuilding and repair, ship design, ship broking and chartering, vessel traffic management, maritime pilotage and others.

While urging Africa to not relent in its determination to increase Africa’s share of global investment in the maritime sector in line with vision of the revised African Maritime Transport Charter, the IMO rep noted that the conference provides platform for all member states to take actions to promote a sustainable blue economy.

For instance, Nigeria, a leading exporter of crude oil and an import dependent economy, has since the demise of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) in 90s, been facing the challenges of lack of capacity to enable indigenous ship owners tap into the opportunities inherent in her shipping business. 

Sobantu Tilayi, immediate past interim chairman of AAMA, said on sideline BusinessDay with a lot of intra-regional and bi-lateral trade take place between African countries, without any of the countries benefiting from the carriage of the tonnage due to lack of African own and registered vessel.

“For instance, a lot of trade relationship exist between South Africa and Nigeria; South Africa and Kenya as well as other countries. These trades generate volumes that mostly international shipping lines benefit from the carriage,” said the CEO of South African Maritime Administration. 

Maritime nations in Africa, Tilayi pointed need to grow their ship registry by empowering and encouraging ship owners to acquire and own oceangoing vessels to participate in the carriage of the cargo.

“We need to address issues of capacity development, research, policy alignment and industry participation, among several others. We control 2.5 percent of global trade figures by volume and our participation in the maritime industry is less than one percent. We must increase our participation in the global trade and the only way to achieve this is to increase the number of seafarers coming from South Africa, Nigeria and the others,” he explained.

“To achieve this, we need to increase our tonnage that is the number of ships on each country’s fleet by increasing the number of ships registered in our flags. We also need to ensure that our laws are aligned to international best practice so as to enthrone a regime of ease of doing business in the various countries vis-a-vis the continent,” he added.

On the other hand, member states government, the AAMA communiqué advised needs to provide fiscal incentives to attract vessels to their respective ship registry.

The need for African countries to combat issues relating to piracy, sea robbery and other maritime related crimes also came to the front burner, as member countries were encouraged to re-enforce regional cooperation and coordination, enhance information sharing and regulatory governance to combat the menace of piracy and other maritime crimes.

Citing example of what Nigeria is doing to address the security challenges facing its maritime industry, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbaja said that Federal Government recently approved a new maritime architectural framework that will effectively make the waters free from pirates and enhance safe shipping.

“We are giving the required support to the Nigerian Navy and other security agencies in and within the West African sub-region to effectively work together and police our water ways for trade to flourish.  This arrangement will also help to eliminate piracy and sea robbery within our maritime domain. The results are encouraging and piracy has dropped in the last six months,” the Vice President added.

Human capacity building was another issue that topped discussion at the conference, and the delegates identified the need to build skills among Africans to create jobs. This, according to them, would enable Africans to do seafaring jobs, currently being dominated by foreigners from countries like Philippine, Singapore and Greek.    

“To address the challenges of building human capacities in the maritime sector especially regarding training and employment of cadets, maritime Administrations should develop an integrated human resources strategy for the maritime sector. This will support the provision of skills taking into account, gender balance in the entire maritime value chain which includes shipping and logistics, offshore activities, fishing, tourism and recreation, and safety and security,” stated the communiqué.

“Member States of IMO and parties to its conventions, UNCLOS and African Union Lome Charter must take the initiative to develop their human resource capacity, and request for assistance from IMO and relevant international organisation,” suggested a delegate from Liberia Maritime Authority.

“We need to promote the training and capacity building of the maritime sector, port and industrial personnel for the safe and responsible use of the maritime domain in accordance with the African Union Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa. Countries should take into consideration strengthening of multilateral and regional cooperation at their universities and their training and research institutions in the areas related to the seas and oceans.

In addition, the need to foster economic co-operation between AAMA members, led the association into agreeing to develop and adopt near-coastal trading, certification and competency code for mutual recognition of certificates that will eliminate contentions by Port State Control Inspectors.

According to the communiqué, IMO affirmed its readiness to support Maritime Administrations in Africa in the area of security and human capacity building by equipping Africans to implement, monitor and enforce international instruments. The IMO will also support, when possible, regular meetings of Heads of Maritime Administrations in Africa, which its frequencies would be determined by the AAMA.

At the end of the 2-day event, Nigeria Dakuku Peterside was elected chairman of AAMA alongside 11-member executive committee; South Africa also retained the secretariat of the Association while the Association agreed to hold the 2018 Conference in Egypt as Sychelles and Namibia jostle for the 2019 hosting rights.

AAMA also approved the Organisation of African Maritime Awards starting from Egypt 2018 to recognise and honor outstanding Africans in the sector.

Uzoamaka Anagor-Ewuzie