TrainForTrade completes a strategic semester of executive training
The TrainForTrade Port Management Programme, developed under the umbrella of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD / UN Trade and Development), has completed this Thursday a strategic six-month rollout aimed at reconfiguring the operational and management structure of key maritime nodes across the African continent and the Caribbean region. The mission calendar carried out since January combined academic oversight of critical infrastructure with technical training for senior leadership in modern port governance settings.
The series of interventions began last February at the premises of the Office de la Marine Marchande et des Ports (OMMP) in Tunisia. The meeting provided a framework for the defence of theses by middle managers and local port heads, assessed by a panel of senior executives from Mauritania, Togo, Senegal and Cameroon. The validated projects focused on optimizing the opportunity cost of immobilized capital, digital transformation of customs, security, and advanced revenue management in the port hinterland.
The Port of Las Palmas took the lead in March, acting as a technical training platform for senior executives invited from Cameroon, Guinea and Mauritania. At the Gran Canaria facility, priority was given to developing management and leadership skills in environments marked by high commercial volatility, consolidating the archipelago as a hub for logistics knowledge transfer between Europe and the West Africa corridor.
In April, the TrainForTrade programme adapted its structure to a telematic route to bypass the logistics disruption stemming from the security crisis in institutional governance in the Caribbean. UNCTAD coordinated an online thesis defence by a specialist from Haiti, focused specifically on improving physical security at the Port-au-Prince Port through the deployment of LED lighting systems—a critical asset to ensure night-time operational continuity and to mitigate the risks of looting and sabotage at the capital’s berths.
Certification and asset development in the North Atlantic
The first semester training cycle concluded in June at the premises of Nantes-Saint Nazaire Port in France. The European delegation brought together 30 senior port officials from Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania and Côte d’Ivoire under a programme certifying instructors in modern port management. The technical working sessions were broken down into audits of financial, statistical, legal and environmental governance, a regulatory framework designed to standardize African operational metrics with the requirements of global maritime transport.
The results of the TrainForTrade deployment reaffirm the feasibility of multilateral technical cooperation as a tool to stabilize balances and improve the operational performance of developing ports. Strengthening the director and institutional networks shared by port specialists acts as the key factor for optimizing the global supply chain and addressing security and digitization challenges in the mid-Atlantic.
Las Palmas consolidates itself as the UN training hub for West Africa’s port executive leadership was first published on canarymaritime.com.
