Maritime Education Training in East Africa Region: Current Status

Abstract

East African Maritime Administrations and Port Authorities play a major role in the growth of the economies of the region. Despite this, the maritime sector has always faced great challenges ranging from poor infrastructural development, congestion, lack of ship repair equipment, inadequate human resource, and inadequate training facilities, among others.. Maritime education and training in the region began in the early 1960s, but collapsed soon thereafter. Since then, the East African states have had to seek maritime training overseas, until around year 2000 when a few institutions started developing in Kenya and Tanzania. There has been a continuous growth in the maritime sector in these two countries, but only a few of the institutions have developed the capacity to offer maritime training as per the required standards. The region therefore faces serious human resource and technological challenges. Comparing with the situation in South, West and North African states, East Africa are lagging behind in human capacity building for the maritime sector. Whereas these other regions have fully established maritime academies with all relevant training facilities, there is no such academy in East Africa. The sector is in dire need of well trained and qualified human resource who are in a position to improve the quality of service offered at the ports and in the ships. To adequately address the issues of training and expertise, the East African region needs to enhance of Maritime Education and Training (MET) activities at various levels. This paper seeks to assess the situation of MET in the East Africa region. The challenges encountered in MET in the region are analysed, and possible solutions that can bring change to the current situation are explored and discussed.