20100401
all africa

THE PHRASE, 'He who controls transport, controls the trade' has remained a truism. Especially in Africa, where there is a near total dependence on foreigners to provide shipping services without identifiable measures to develop indigenous capacity.

Issues' bordering on capacity building was the focus of an international capacity building workshop for media/public relation executives in the maritime industry, which held at the Regional Maritime University (RMU) in Tema, Ghana.

The importance of the human element in shipping cannot be over emphasised. The need for a robust human capital as a necessary growth pillar for sector is quite appreciable now than ever before.

The workshop, organised by Balm of Gilead Communications with the support of RMU emphasised among others, the need for Africans to brace up and control shipping trade in Africa, which is currently under the firm grip of foreigners, who use the clause of lack of capacity to keep Africans down.

This stems from their knowledge of the huge market in Africa and use all sorts of subtle blackmail to enable them continue dominance of shipping. Ship arrest, it was observed, was one of the measures used by foreigners to manipulate the system to discourage African nations from owning ships.

Africa's attention is diverted to some basic issues like health, housing etc, thereby overlooking the huge economic potentials of sea trade.

The world economy is highly interconnected. Over the past four decades, total seaborne trade has more then quadrupled. It is also common knowledge that over 90 per cent of the world trade is transported by sea.

In Nigeria, the maritime sector is responsible for facilitating over 90 per cent of trading prospects including oil and gas. Nigeria accounts for over 60 per cent of total seaborne traffic in volume and value in the West African sub-region with a GDP accounting for over 60 per cent of the total GDP of the 16 countries that make up the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS). The successes or otherwise of the Nigerian maritime sector therefore has a reverberating impact on the sub-region.

One of the major shortfalls of Nigeria's national trade policy, particularly as it relates to the oil and gas sector, is the terms of trade, which allow its crude exports and products import to be sold on F.O.B terms.

It is clear that without the vessels to move this black gold from areas of surplus to areas of need, value is not created. If we assume that the country earns over $100 billion annually from oil exports and 10 per cent of that represents the freight element, which translate to over $10 billion earned by foreign vessels under Nigeria's trade policy.

This trend is worrisome and government's attention must be drawn to the negative consequences of this policy on the Nigerian maritime Sector and its impact on the overall economy. The strategic vision in this regard is to propose a phased review of the terms of trade whilst building relevant competencies locally, in order to avert dislocations to the supply chain.

In January 2008, the world trade fleet consisted of 50,525 ships with a combined tonnage of 728,225,000GRT.

Nigeria has a sizeable cargo potential on account of its oil reserves of over 30 billion barrels, gas reserves of 187 Trillion Cubic Feet (TCF) and of course a population of about 160 million people and the attendant demand profile.

The annual average import within the last six (6) years is 32,244,042 MTS while annual freight cost is between $ 2.6 billion to $3.5 billion. A very negligible portion of this income presently resides in Nigeria. An important poser in this regard is that with all of these demands pull factors, what is the size of Nigeria's fleet that can take advantage of these opportunities?

Pioneer president of Ghana, the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah thought of maritime transport very early hence he established a nautical college, which metamorphosed to the Regional Maritime University and built the Tema port to serve the interest of Ghana.

His idea was to set up national shipping line, control transport as well as trade.

Other African nations also established national shipping lines. While Ghana operated the Black Star Line, Nigeria had the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL). CITRAM was the national line of Ivory Coast, East African Line and CAMSHIP of Cameroon.

These all came up during the postcolonial era but have all collapsed. These are what the early nationalist leaders invested so much money in establishing.

One of the resource persons at the international capacity building workshop, Aaron Turkson, who is a former rector of RMU and winner of best administrator in West and Central Africa, explained to Daily Independent that management of the liners may not be totally blamed for the collapse, saying that liner business changed considerably in the early 1980's.

This made running of Liner Company become very expensive and capital intensive and most government did not have that money to continue. But he noted that the Chinese, Malaysia and others survived and are still operating national lines.

He also noted that Ethiopian shipping line is still operating and is the only surviving sub-Saharan shipping line and are currently building eight ships.

Although shipping lines in Africa may have collapsed under poor management and other factors, Turkson believes that Africa has capacity to handle most jobs in the maritime sector.

While decrying the lack of regulation of shipping, he said "I believe we have capacity even for rigs operation," adding that "You find few African crews onboard ships today. Asians take advantage of manning to create jobs for its people but Africans have not taken the advantage to create employment."

He pointed out that in Nigeria offshore, there are so many Philippines doing jobs that are supposed to be done by Nigerians, even as he said, there is huge potential locally, the jobs are there.

A maritime expert, who expressed concern about high shipping charges on goods coming into the sub-region, advised the Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA) to have firm control of shipping trade and reduce charges.

According to the expert, Alock Asamoah, who is the rector of the Regional Maritime University, Ghana, foreign ship owners, had dominated trade and solely deciding shipping charges because shipping trade were not controlled in the sub-region.

Asamoah, who was addressing participants of a three-day international capacity building workshop for media executives and public relations officers in the maritime industry at the RMU noted that shipping rates from China to West Africa, Europe to West Africa are becoming more expensive per nautical mile and tonnes than anywhere else in the world.

Maritime nations, he said, should also be able to have control of cargo allocation to the ship owners. But foreign shipping firms have explained that the cause of high charges had to do with piracy in the Somali waters.

Asamoah recalled that between the 1950s and the early 1980s, the maritime industry boomed, ports, nautical colleges and shipyards were established while the fishing industry was also booming.

He however expressed regret that most of these were no more functional as nations struggled in their bid to industrialise very fast and gain economic independence.

Today, shipping lines belonging to countries and individuals in the sub-region have all collapsed with the maritime industry in the sub-region now controlled by foreigners.

"It is the responsibility of the media in the sub-region to present the facts and awake the shipping practitioners about the big loss," Asamoah said.

Registrar of the RMU, Julius Atikpu said recently, oil was discovered in Ghana, adding that the university had because of this, acquired the capacity to run oil and gas short time courses according to International Standards Organisation (ISO) regulations.

He said the courses are ISO-certified and had received national accreditation of nations like Ghana, Gambia, Sierra-Leone and Liberia. Owner nations of the university are, Gambia, Sierra-Leone , Liberia, Ghana and Cameroon.