Shedding more light on Southern African forwarding association

It was disappointing to note from your April 27 article (Southern Africa forwarding association gets a kickstart) on the Federation of Clearing and Forwarding Associations of Southern Africa (FCFASA) that your correspondent made no effort to contact the leadership of the Federation – all of whom were at the February meeting which quoted commentator Barney Curtis attended. The Federation has been in its current form since April 2010 when the first general and executive committee meetings were held in Lusaka, Zambia. Readers may recollect that some years ago a similar body representing the F&C industry regionally was headquartered in Harare, Zimbabwe under the leadership of Ed Little, then the executive officer of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff). That body became moribund when sponsorship funds from US Aid were no longer available. Since its inception, the current president of FCFASA, Joseph Musariri, who is also CEO of the Shipping and Forwarding Agents’ Association of Zimbabwe, along with colleagues from the region, has made considerable efforts to strengthen the Federation. These have culminated in the involvement of Trade Mark Southern Africa which is assisting with both finance and expertise. The Federation, which continues to be headquartered in Harare, met in Boksburg during April, where eleven of the fifteen regional countries were represented and a five-year business plan which defined the strategic objectives of the Federation was developed. These objectives include enhancing the current level of advocacy with regional states, customs administrations and other bodies; improving all forms of communication channels between both regional associations and their corporate membership, and most importantly developing training capacity to improve skill levels in supply chains throughout the region. Saaff has been intimately involved with FCFASA for the past two years and is providing direct assistance in establishing training programmes and in web site development. Saaff’s regional consultant was vice-president of the Federation up to this year’s annual general meeting (AGM), when a colleague from Zambia took over this position. It continues to have a seat on the executive committee. The ultimate success of the Federation will depend not only on support from regional associations but on the corporate membership of those associations. Such success will be apparent in improved trade facilitation region-wide, on better and faster border processing, on the reduction in non-tariff barriers and finally on the improved level of skills in the F&C industry.