On Thursday 25 June, the world will celebrate the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) Day of the Seafarer. This year’s theme focuses on maritime education and aims to create awareness among young people about career opportunities at sea.

For Gulf of Guinea states, the event is an opportunity to reflect on the disappearance of their national shipping lines, which occurred in the mid-1990s when maritime transport was liberalised globally.

Prior to this, the 1974 International Convention on the Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences had established a fair distribution of maritime transport between exporting and importing countries. This convention was tacitly repealed and ever since, most African states, particularly those in the Gulf of Guinea, have had neither ships nor shipping companies worth mentioning.

Still, students who are enrolled at maritime schools need ships for their training, as they have to accumulate a certain number of hours at sea to complete their studies. For instance, to obtain a master mariner certificate of competency at the Regional Academy of Science and Technology of the Sea of Abidjan (ARSTM) – a training centre for West and Central African francophone countries – students must complete seven years of education and training. This includes three years at sea.

This requirement poses a big challenge to students in the ARSTM department of seafaring, who have difficulty completing their training. The centre has subsequently been forced to reduce its student intake. Lieutenant Colonel Karim Coulibaly, the ARSTM Director General says that the academy’s ‘main challenge is finding engagements for its students, because African countries have no ships.’ Every year, Coulibaly struggles to find training opportunities for his students on foreign ships. The ARSTM’s sister academy in Accra, Ghana, has the status of a university and enrols English-speaking students from the Gulf of Guinea. This academy, however, also has to negotiate with foreign companies to obtain internships for its students. These two centres of excellence certainly have the necessary teaching equipment, including simulators for training skilled seafarers, but their real challenge is ensuring on-deck internships for their students.

The ship is the seafarer’s main place of work. Irrespective of training, a seafarer faces redundancy if there is no ship or shipping company willing to recruit him or her. Certainly, there may be job opportunities for African seafarers on foreign vessels (as people in Western countries are becoming more attracted to jobs based on land), but there is no clear indication of when or how many jobs will become available.  African seafarers also face competition from other continents, including Asia, which is dominating the labour market. China and the Philippines account for 10% of the global seafaring workforce, which was estimated to be made up of 1.2 million people in 2005. All the African countries together represent only 2% of this workforce. Countries in the Gulf of Guinea should not rely solely on the international market, but should create a job market for mariners by setting up shipping companies and acquiring merchant ships.

Beyond the issues of training and employment, significant economic benefit can also be derived from the maritime transport generated by their external trade. Côte d’Ivoire, for instance, is the world’s largest producer of cocoa with 40% of the world’s production, but it is entirely dependent on foreign shipping companies to export its product to international markets. Maritime transport represents about 40% of the price of raw materials and 10% of the price of capital goods. Countries that are dependent on external commerce, and don’t possess their own vessels, lose out on adding this value to their product.

Acquiring commercial vessels is also a way for states to assert their sovereignty, since it eases a state’s dependence on ship-owning countries. The state can also subsidise maritime transport when foreign ship owners decide to increase the freight rates for vessels calling at their ports. Moreover, seeing its national flag flying on the high seas can be prestigious and a source of pride for any country.

Drawing lessons from past experiences of African state-owned shipping lines, where their downfall was partly attributed to poor management, the ideal situation would be for states to disengage from maritime transport and leave it to the private sector. Unfortunately, the domestic private sector is still weak in most Gulf of Guinea states. Thus, the solution lies in private-public partnerships with the state taking initiative. The state would no longer be the sole or majority shareholder, but would share ownership with the private sector. Management would be entrusted to private maritime transport professionals.

This view aligns with the 2050 Africa’s Maritime Integrated Strategy, which advocates for a Blue Economy to be created to assist with Africa’s development. The African Union, which will launch the Decade of African Seas and Oceans next month on 25 July, should encourage its member states to focus on creating African shipping lines. This also applies to the Economic Community of West African States, which is implementing a maritime strategy that includes a blue economy and education as key objectives.

Political will is the first factor for success. For instance, after the Joola disaster in 2002, Senegal was able to acquire three passenger vessels with a carrying capacity of 200 people each to open up the Casamance region in southern Senegal, which is cut off from the rest of the country by a river. Pricing was not allowed to be an obstacle to the purchase of the ships. Drawing lessons from the mismanagement of the Joola, the Senegalese government granted the management of the new vessels to a private company.

Other countries in the Gulf of Guinea should express the same readiness to create shipping lines and acquire merchant ships. By doing so, they might reasonably encourage their youth to turn to seafaring. While ensuring jobs for their citizenry, these countries would also add value to their export products and increase their independence.

Written by Barthélemy Blédé, Senior Researcher, Conflict Management and Peacebuilding Division, ISS Dakar