By Muyiwa Lucas
The Secretary General of Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), Alain Michel Luvam-bano, has advocated stronger collaboration of navies and coast guards in Africa to harness the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
Luvambano, who commended the Nigerian government for being the first to come up with an anti piracy law on the continent, said fighting piracy and sea robbery in Africa would promote trade in line with the spirit of AfCFTA.
According to him, if navies share information and apply relevant technologies, criminals and criminality will be curbed. He added that cost of insurance may likely reduce and ship owners’ security concerns on African waters with attendant cost implications would be largely addressed, if this is achieved.
He said: “We in MOWCA have read the AfCFTA agreement and seen that not much was said about maritime, whereas that is where the highest volume of trade happens in Africa and the world. If fear of likely attacks on vessels in some parts of our waters is addressed, this will boost more trade, reduce cost of insurance and improve wealth for African citizens. This is one reason why we have put some things in place for closer monitoring of developments on African waters that sees what goes on in 25 countries. I created the Centre for Information and Communication (CINFOCOM), back in 2014.”
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He said information obtained from the CINFOCOM centre confirmed that a lot were being achieved by maritime administrations in Africa, and the improvements are very commendable. Besides, he said the centre also served as an observatory unit that contributes to MOWCA’s interface with various maritime administrations and countries through their focal points.
Luvambano further said as a matter of policy, MOWCA had priorotised employing youths knowledgeable in ICT to be at the CINFOCOM desk. This is to make the younger ones to understudy operations with a view to preparing them for eventual take off of the orgainsation’s affairs in the nearest future.
“We are also concerned about preparing our maritime manpower base through training and retraining of our youths in our academies in Côte D’Ivore and the Regional Maritime University in Ghana. I must commend the signing of an anti piracy law by Nigerian government. This is the first in Africa and worthy of emulation. We participated and saw the outcome of a Global Maritime Security Conference held in Nigeria,” he said, while urging all member countries and organisations to pursue full implementation of resolutions reached at the high powered event not only for the good of trade among Africans but also for benefit of organisations and countries doing business across African waters.
To further deepen the influence of MOWCA, talks have begun among Francophone member countries to upgrade its Abidjan based Regional Maritime Academy (RMA) for Sciences and Technologies of the Sea to a maritime university.
The decision for the upgrade came up at a recent 12th Board of Governors’ meeting held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. RMA is the specialised organ of MOWCA in charge of training of seafarers and land based staff of the shipping industry for the 15 Francophone member countries. This initiative is to bring the Abidjan RMA to the same level as the sister training institution for Anglophone member countries- Regional Maritime University, Accra, Ghana.
It was also agreed that a consultant will be appointed by the Management of RMA to conduct a broad study on sea training of cadets on board vessels sailing in the Gulf of Guinea.
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