The Southern Africa
Shippers’ Council (SASC)
– since moving from a
part-time secretariat to a
full-time one – is engaging
with the industry to
ensure a “collective voice”
in growing regional trade
and addressing
supply chain
challenges in
the region.
“With our
full-time
regional focus,
we believe we
can unlock
greater regional integration
and work with the industry
– through engagement
with government,
industry bodies and
leaders – to grow our
global competitiveness as
a region,” said SASC chief
executive Brenda Horne
Ferreira.
She noted that to
increase global trade with
the southern African
region, as well as stimulate
intra-regional trade, the
industry needed to create
an environment where it
was as easy to trade with
the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) as with
South Africa. Horne
Ferreira
pointed to the
World Bank’s
latest Logistics
Performance
Index (LPI),
highlighting
major
discrepancies
in southern African
logistics performance (the
DRC, Mozambique and
Zimbabwe are the lowest
performing countries
within southern Africa).
“To address this
requires real collaboration
which can only be achieved
if government and the
private sector work
together to establish a
common set of standards,”
she added.
Horne Ferreira told
FTW that SASC had
been involved in 97 highlevel
national, regional
and global industry
engagements since the
permanent office was
opened in Johannesburg
on July 1 this year. “We see
ourselves as aggregators of
innovative collaboration
across all modes of
transport. We firmly
believe that if you are not
part of the collaboration
platform, you are part of
the problem,” said Horne
Ferreira.
She noted that the
SASC’s transformation
process had been
thoroughly researched
and benchmarked against
world best practice for
other global shippers'
councils that had already
begun moving towards
advocating integration
and collaboration. “By
benchmarking against
regional and global best
practices, we are already
more competitive on the
global stage,” said Horne
Ferreira.
The SASC mandate to
secure funding to expand
the office and appoint
a strong operations,
administration and
technical advisement
team is “progressing
and is on track”, said
Horne Ferreira. “Overall,
the industry has been
overwhelmingly positive to
the SASC transformation
and we have signed up a
number of new members,
including from the
southern African region,”
she said.
INSERT & CAPTION
If you’re not part
of the collaboration
platform, you are
part of the problem.
– Brenda Horne Ferreira
