NCTTCA HOSTS SSATP REC-TCC MEETING

A meeting of the SSATP Transport Coordination Committee of the Regional Economic Communities in Sub-Saharan (REC-TCC) was hosted by NCTTCA at Diani Reef Hotel, Mombasa, Kenya from 21-23 April, 2009.

The REC-TCC was chaired by the new REC- TCC Chairperson, Mr Hosea Nyangweso of the East African Community. The new Program Manager of the SSATP Mr. Stephen VINCENT was introduced.to participants during the meeting.

The meeting was attended by delegates representing ALCO, ECA/NRID, ECA/SRO-CA, CICOS, EAC, COMESA, ECCAS, FESARTA, Walvis Bay Corridor Group, Central Corridor, Dar Corridor Committee, North South Corridor, UEMOA, Northern Corridor/NCTCA, MCLI, ECA, USAID Trade Hub form South Africa, Ministries of Transport from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan and DRC, The World Bank and SSATP.

As agreed during the previous REC-TCC meeting held in Addis Ababa in October 2008, the first day of meeting was dedicated to a workshop on the lessons of the Northern Corridor Transport Observatory. Public and private sector representatives of the Northern Corridor member states stakeholders, as well representatives of regional organizations took part in the workshop.

During the workshop, a number of presentations were made. Mr. Jean Kizito KABANGUKA of the NCTTCA made a brief presentation on the objectives and the background of the Northern Corridor Observatory, which is centred on Performance Benchmarking and Performance Monitoring. He outlined the findings of and lessons learnt from the baseline survey undertaken in 2005, including the challenges of a sustained data collection.

Mr. Olivier Hartmann, the consultant seconded to NCTTCA by SSATP during the implementation of the NC Observatory, continued the presentation with an emphasis on the data collection methodology, data sources and linkage of data across modes using modern IT systems. His presentation highlighted the advantages of implementing the Regional Cargo Tracking System along the Northern Corridor to enhance automatic data collection.

The NCTCCA Information Technology Officer, Mr. Athman Mohamed made a presentation on the database design for the observatory. In so doing he indicated that the database, which was originally designed in MS Access 2003, was being converted to the more robust SQL Server to facilitate web-based user interface. He went on to discuss the methods being considered for the dissemination of information obtained from the observatory.

The workshop received the report of the World Bank study on “Transport Prices and Costs on International Transport Corridors in Sub-Saharan Africa”, which was presented by Mr. Jean Francoise Marteau and Mr. Gael Raballand. o
In his presentation, Mr. Jean-Francois Marteau highlighted the impact of being landlocked. He argued that due to dependency on transit states, landlocked countries were faced with high transaction costs. Mr Gael Raballand presented the findings of the study, which were thoroughly debated by the workshop.