The African Shipowners Association in collaboration with the African Union Commission have said that it would be meeting with African heads of government on the need for the creation of a Continental Cabotage Regime for all African Countries.
Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma gave this assurance in Lagos yesterday at a 3-day conference tagged "African Cargo for African Shipowners" organized by the African Shipowners Association.
The African Shipowners Association in collaboration with the African Union Commission have said that it would be meeting with African heads of government on the need for the creation of a Continental Cabotage Regime for all African Countries.
Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma gave this assurance in Lagos yesterday at a 3-day conference tagged "African Cargo for African Shipowners" organized by the African Shipowners Association.
Dr. Zuma who was represented by Mr. Kame Domguia Samuel disclosed that a summit tagged "Lome Extraordinary Maritime Summit" is coming up by March 2016 and one of the declarations that will be adopted at the meeting is the creation of an African Continent Cabotage Regime.
The communique of the 3-Days conference is also going to form the agenda for the AU meeting which will also have President Muhammadu Buhari in attendance.
Dr. Zuma said that "every day, large numbers of ships navigate our waters, but we have so few ships flying under African flags, and too few African shipowners, the ships who take and bring cargo from our shores, the jobs, the food and other services they use, all these are value adds which Africans have very little stake in"
"In addition, our countries are increasingly training seafarers, but our young people cannot get sea experience because we do not have enough ships"
In his opening speech at the conference, President of the African Shipowners Association; Barrister Temisan Omatseye said that a lot of cargoes are leaving Africa and coming into Africa but lamented that these cargoes are being dropped by foreign ships.
Omatseye said that the aim of creating an African Cabotage Regime is to ensure that goods leaving Africa should be based on Cost Insurance and Freight (CIF) bases, while cargoes imported will be on Free On Board (FOB) basis.
"As heads of government meeting is coming up in March 2016, this is where we are taking proposals from here to tell the government, we are going to tell them how much we are losing in Africa, we are going to tell them that we need to change our trading terms"
"We have a lot of our youths who are not trained and unemployed as seafarers, we are trying to bring them back to get jobs so that our people will not keep running to Europe"
"The challenge we have however is that we do not have the audit of the cargoes leaving Africa, the amount of money we are paying on insurance, once we have this, it is going to guide us"
"Nigeria does not have the vessels and that is why it is an African thing, if we go as Nigeria they will crush us, but if we go as Africa they will be scared because already, Africa owns the cargo, Africa is bigger than China and most of the things used in China is from Africa, so as a continent, we are looking on how to push this process"
"Once this happens, Nigeria will benefit, our youths will begin to get employed" he said.
Omatseye who is a former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) also assured that in order to ensure that funding does not hamper Nigerians from benefiting from the African Cabotage Regime, the association is going to ensure that the country keys into the Capetown Convention.
With the Capetown Convention, Omatseye said that NIMASA would have to stand as a guarantor for shipowners who intend to purchase ships.
"Initially, airlines could not buy aircrafts, and Nigeria became a signatory to Capetown Convention, this means that the NCAA acted as a guarantee to the non-payment of a loan. This is what Arik Airline did, they did not do anything special"
"This only covers airlines, space and railway equipment, what we are trying to do now is to extend it to cover maritime, this is why AU is driving this process, we are not writing a new conversion, we are only adding maritime as a protocol"
"We are trying to create a hub with all this, and if Nigeria does not get its acts together, the hub could go to Lome and Cotonou, what will happen is that all the big vessels will go over there and dump their cargoes, container vessels will no longer come to Nigeria, it is from that port that Nigerian vessels will go and bring in the cargoes" he said.
He however assured that priority will be given to each nations's national carrier, in the absence of this, it will be passed to regional and African ships.
Also speaking, the 1st Vice President of the association; Mr. Stanley Ahorlu harped on the need for every member nation to have their own Cabotage Act in place in order to enhance the African Cabotage regime.
Also speaking, representative of the African Union Chairperson at the conference, Mr. Kame Domguia Samuel assured that the African Development Bank (AfDB) is very committed to the African Cabotage project and that there would be a strong support for Africans in the maritime sector.
"The ships will be built by Africans, for Africans in Africa and this requires some strong financial support"
Kame who is also the Coordinator, Africa's Integrated Maritime Strategy Task Force, said that that a decade of "Oceans and Seas" was launched by the AU in July 2015 by heads of government of African Unions.
"With this, there is a ten years road map to implement, this means that ships be built in Africa and by Africans." he said.
On his part, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’Council; Barrister Hassan Bello called on the shipowners to create a platform that will enable African countries to key into the Cabotage regime.
Bello who was represented at the conference by a senior officer of the Council; Chief Cajetan Agu said that in order to realize the African Cabotage Regime in line with the African Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS) 2050, the African Shipowners Association must lead the campaign for AU member countries to embrace the 'Blue Economy' to enable the African continent benefit from the resources and potentials of the African seas and oceans.
"On our own part, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council shall remain committed to support projects and programmes that are designed to build capacity for the carriage of African cargoes, reduce the cost of transporting cargo in the continent"
Some of the countries in attendance at the conference yesterday included: Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone among others.
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