Since April 04, CCAC senior staff have been receiving training at the CNSC.

It is evident that Cameroon holds a strategic position in the Central African sub-region in terms of foreign trade. Local players in this sector of activity abound with many skills given their experience and the resources available to them. Such is the case of the Cameroon National Shippers' Council (CNSC), which assists and defends the interests of shippers throughout the transport chain, with a view to promoting foreign trade.

Activities carried out so far by the CNSC have definitely caught the attention of the Central African Shippers' Council (CCAC) which has dispatched a delegation to Cameroon on an experience sharing mission. Received by Younouss Soungui, CNSC's Deputy General Manager, the delegation will benefit from a week-long training programme in line with the recommendations of the Union of African Shippers' Councils (UASC), which advocates for experience-sharing between shippers' councils for better assistance.

As a specialised body of the Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), the UASC counts 17 national shippers' councils and similar bodies from States in these two sub-regions, pursuant to the provisions of the 3^rd Ministerial Conference of West and Central African States on Maritime Transport held in Accra (Ghana) from 23 to 26 February 1977. The headquarters of the Union is situated in Douala, Cameroon, in accordance with the headquarters agreement signed between UASC and the Republic of Cameroon on 29 November 1988. This agreement states that the Cameroon government recognises the legal personality of the UASC as an international organisation. As a result, the latter enjoys the status granted to diplomatic missions in Cameroon. Some of the objectives of the UASC include the strengthening of consultation and negotiation mechanisms with liner conferences; shipping lines whose vessels serve African ports and/or any shipping interest groupings, auxiliaries and in general stakeholders in the transport chain; the establishment and maintenance of cooperative relationships with transport companies and associations, ports, shippers' councils of non-member countries, sub-regional, regional and international organisations and institutions; the promotion of the facilitation and fluidity of transit traffic for landlocked countries; the reduction and control of the impact of transport costs on the economies of African States; the enhancement of cooperation between member organisations.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that the CCAC has sought assistance from Cameroon, as it tries to wake from hibernation. A delegation from the CCAC met several senior officials of the Port Authority of Kribi sometime in January 2020. The objective of this meeting was to explore the business opportunities offered by the PAK in terms of investments and the passage of goods.

Source: Le Financier d'Afrique, No. 1016