Promotion of Decent Work in Southern African Ports (phase II)

Governments throughout Southern and Eastern Africa have identified the transport sector as key for the development of local economies. Ports play a particularly important role as transportation hubs, since they constitute the main connectors with the world market. Competitive ports are an important factor for economic growth and ultimately employment creation. To fully unlock this growth potential and maximize the related employment creation impact, a series of competitiveness challenges will need to be overcome in these ports, though. African ports rank low in international competitiveness rankings due to a combination of factors that relate to workforce-centered productivity bottlenecks and lack of effective social dialogue structures, among others. The port competitiveness challenge is widely acknowledged by governments and port operators alike, and a number of initiatives are underway to address them. One prominent example is the Durban Port Worker Development project facilitated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and funded in equal parts by the governments of Flanders and the Netherlands. The ILO was brought in to firstly broker social dialogue around workforce-centered productivity challenges identified by Transnet Port Terminals, and next to facilitate training and other support services to boost the skills base of port workers, optimize work processes, and where applicable refine existing human resource development systems. The two-year initiative was launched in January 2011 and focuses on the Durban Container Terminal. As independently verified by an external mid-term review in mid 2012, the project is making a significant direct contribution to the efforts of local stakeholders to boost the competitiveness of the Durban Container Terminal. The mid-term review also revealed that there is excellent potential to replicate the dialogue-driven competitiveness improvement approach in other ports throughout South Africa and in neighboring countries, provided that the roll-out continues to be supported initially by the project. The project proposed in this outline seeks to further consolidate the achievements of phase I and replicate the intervention approach successfully tested in Durban in other container terminals operated by Transnet Port Terminals in South Africa, and in other container terminals along the Southern African seaboard. In the process, the project would draw on the newly established Maritime School of Excellence as a subregional service hub to in turn capacitate other schools, and through these schools more port workers in other ports. To boost the impact of this South-South capacity building effort, the Maritime School of Excellence will work in strategic alliance with the port schools in Antwerp and Rotterdam. The proposed second project phase has a duration of again two years and a donor-funded budget of 1,2 million USD leveraged with contributions from Transnet amounting to another 300,000 USD, and primarily set aside for port worker training in South African ports. Local stakeholders in Mozambique will contribute the equivalent of 50,000 USD in kind to the capacity building effort.

Project symbol

SAF/13/01/FLA

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Pretoria

Start date

01/06/2013

End date

28/02/2016

Total allocation

598452

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

597723

Development Partners

Belgium, Government of Flanders, Department of Foreign Affairs

Country/Countries

South Africa

Outcomes

Sustainable Enterprises