From left:  Director General of the Ghana Maritime Authority, Kwame Owusu, Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside and the head, Anglo Africa Section, Technical Cooperation Division of the International Maritime Organisation IMO Mr. William Azuh at the Post-Transport Policy Workshop dinner held in Lagos, Nigeria., recently.

 

The Federal Government through the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency NIMASA, has accepted to provide technical support to the Ghana Maritime Authority GMA in the areas of capacity building, Coastal and Inland Shipping Cabotage policy implementation, among others.

This technical support, which is expected to lead to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding MoU is in line with NIMASA’s quest to ensure that African countries compete favourably with other maritime nations across the globe.

Apart from capacity building and the enforcement of the Cabotage Act, the MoU is expected to cover other areas such as regular knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer.

Director General of the agency, Dr. Dakuku Peterside who made this known during a working visit by the Ghana Maritime Authority GMA team to NIMASA led by its Director General, Mr. Kwame Owusu, told the visiting team that in carrying out its statutory functions, the agency is covered by three important legislations of the National Assembly, which include the Merchant Shipping Act, the NIMASA Act 2007 and the Cabotage Act 2003.

According to him, in order to actualise its core mandates which cut across shipping development, maritime safety and security, maritime labour services, among others, the agency is currently repositioning and rebranding for greater efficiency.

This is with a view to developing and sustaining a virile maritime industry in line with the dynamics of the entire global maritime space..

He said: “We have undertaken a number of initiatives to reform, restructure and reposition the organisation; what we have now is not what we used to have, a lot has changed over time and you will get to learn from our own experience of the life we lived and we are still living. Nobody realises his vision overnight, our vision is work progressively with a target to becoming the foremost maritime administration in Africa, advancing Nigeria’s maritime goals and aspirations”.

Meanwhile, the Director General of the GMA, who spoke earlier, said that the aim of the visit was to understudy and learn from the experiences of NIMASA in order to grow the country’s maritime industry.

The GMA-boss said “We are here to strengthen the bilateral relationships that exist between both countries and to learn international best practices from NIMASA”.

While commending the doggedness of the Peterside- led management of NIMASA, especially in terms of repositioning Nigeria’s maritime industry, he said that such efforts have by extension advanced the course of the maritime industry of the entire African continent.

The delegation from Ghana came to learn and share part of the experience of NIMASA so that they can replicate same in their country.

Recall that the NIMASA penultimate month hosted the third edition of the Association of African Maritime Administrations AAMA Conference, which held in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, between April 19 and 21, 2017.

A highpoint of the event was the election of the NIMASA DG as the chairman of the association and he has since demonstrated his determination towards the integration of the maritime industry in Africa with a view to making it competitive with its peers in Europe, America and Asia.