The General Manager of the Cameroon National Shippers' Council (CNSC), Mr. Auguste Mbappe Penda, statutory Treasurer of the Union of African Shippers' Councils (UASC), urged his peers to share their experiences for coherence in cross-border actions.

Represented at UASC's 12th General Assembly scheduled from 1 to 3 December 2021 in Kinshasa, Cameroon which hosts the headquarters of this specialized body of the Maritime Organization for West and Central Africa (MOWCA), made its voice heard through Mr. Auguste Mbappe Penda. The General Manager of the Cameroon National Shippers' Council (CNSC) underlined the need for UASC member states to harmonise their approaches to shippers' assistance in their respective countries at a time when the continent is committed to eliminating tariff barriers. Concrete measures should be taken to eradicate practices that impede the smooth flow of trade in the interest of shippers.

Shippers' councils must work in solidarity by sharing their experiences. Activities aimed at promoting trade, simplifying cross-border trade procedures and facilitating transport and trade along the corridors must be made permanent. Actors in the public and private sector must be sensitised, trained and provided with adequate facilities for the smooth flow of transit traffic to landlocked countries. Moreover, it is imperative that procedures for collecting statistical data for the purposes of statistics, identification, transport costs monitoring, and the security, tracking and traffic of goods be harmonised.

At the end of these working sessions officially launched by Mr. Marc Ekila Likombio, Vice-Minister of Transport and Channels of Communication, UASC's current President, Mr. Olivier Manzila Mutala, Director General of the Office of Multimodal Freight Management (OGEFREM), expressed his delight in seeing the high turnout of participants. A number of important resolutions and recommendations were made during the meeting. It was thus decided that the Cameroon National Shippers' Council should assist the General Secretariat of the Union in setting up a work programme between the Union of African Shippers' Councils and a number of institutions such as the Borderless Alliance, the General Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area and the United Nations Development Programme, for support in the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area in member states. The Cameroon National Shippers' Council, given its experience in the domain, is expected to play a leading role in the Cargo Tracking Note harmonisation project within the CEMAC zone.