New face to market WBCG in Lusaka

Andrew Sinyangwe has taken over the running of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group office in Lusaka. Multi-lingual Sinyangwe grew up in Ndola and spent some time in the logistics industry before going into a family business. He is now back in the logistics industry, where his command of five languages – including French and English – will help him market the corridors. The Lusaka office is responsible primarily for marketing and promoting the port of Walvis Bay and the Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi Development Corridor (WBNLDC – formerly known as the Trans Caprivi Corridor) in the DRC, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He is also responsible for facilitating trade along the WBNLDC through strategic partnerships with the public and private sectors under the umbrella of the WBNLDC Technical Committee Meeting comprising members of the DRC, Namibia, and Zambia. “We facilitate meetings between the various ministries of the three member states in order to remove bottlenecks and challenges along the Corridor,” he says. The Walvis Bay Corridor Group has opened up another option for the shipment of cargo to and from Zambia. With additional shipping lines calling at the Port of Walvis Bay, and the increase of copper exports from the Copperbelt and the DRC, there has been an increase in trucking capacity along this route, which has translated into the reduction of transport costs, he says. Commodities along this trade route include the import of raw materials such as ammonium nitrate and flocculent used in mining activities on the Copperbelt and in the North Western Province. The WBNLDC has also become the preferred trade route of registered car dealers in Zambia for the importation of vehicles from the UK, USA and Japan. “It is also a much safer route for exports of copper and other high-value commodities from the Copperbelt to the Americas and Europe,” he says.