Kanayo
Awani, Managing Director of Afreximbank’s Intra-African Trade
Initiative, speaking at the Africa Shipowners Summit in Seychelles.
Africa
must urgently upgrade its maritime and logistic infrastructure in
order to successfully promote the continent’s trade, especially
intra-African trade, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank),
has said.
In
an address at the Africa Shipowners Summit in Seychelles on 23 April,
Kanayo Awani, Managing Director of Afreximbank’s Intra-African
Trade Initiative, speaking on behalf of Bank President Dr. Benedict
Oramah, described weak maritime and logistic infrastructure as being
particularly harmful to African trade, noting that the continent
currently had the world’s highest transportation and transaction
costs.
Ms.
Awani pointed out that only a few of the African countries with
access to the sea had established the right infrastructure for marine
transport even though Marine transport accounted for 92 per cent of
Africa’s external trade and 92 per cent of the continents imports
were seaborne.
She
said that Africa currently handled only six per cent of global
seaborne traffic, out of which 50 per cent of the volume was handled
by Egypt and South Africa.
Lamenting
that most African countries did not have national vessels, Ms. Awani
said that it was estimated that Kenya lost about $3 billion annually
in money paid to foreign shipping lines.
She
recommended that there should be incentives to encourage African
businesses to support the development of local shipping lines and
called for investment in national/domestic fleet through gradual and
staggered vessel acquisition, terminal management, freight forwarding
and logistics.
Opportunities
also existed in inland waterways, cruise ship services,
trans-shipment, container manufacturing and repairs, dry docking and
other value addition services, such as sorting, arranging,
packaging/re-packaging, cold storage and distribution, she added.
The
Summit, organized by the African Shipowners Association, also
featured the presentation of an Honorary Captain’s Award to Dr.
Oramah by the organisers for Afreximbank’s contribution in
supporting the Blue Economy and the Maritime Sector in Africa. Ms.
Awani accepted the award on behalf of the President.
Other
Recipients were President Danny Faure of Seychelles and African Union
Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat.
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