The consultant engaged to develop Competency Based Curriculum for freight forwarders in East Africa presented a draft for input by the industry stakeholders as the process takes a final lap in readiness for training roll out.
The National Curriculum Implementation Committee (NCIC) in Burundi was the first to receive the draft, which will also be presented to Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania before the end of the week.
The meeting, which was held at Roca Hotel in Bujumbura, discussed among methods, accreditation of the curriculum, languages of delivery, computation of credit hours, among others. The Federation of East Africa Freight Forwarders Associations (FEAFFA), which is coordinating the training programme, attended the meeting virtually.
“Updating of the curriculum is at the final stages and the ground is well set to ensure that the training will be rolled out without any hiccup,” Fred Seka, FEAFFA President assured.
The project is funded by Trademark East Africa (TMEA) under the East Africa Logistics Skills enhancement program. The updating was due to the results of a market survey conducted to identify the training needs of the industry aligned to real labor market needs and opportunities in the freight forwarding operating environment, modern day customs agency and freight forwarding operations and their requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
The Need Assessment (TNA) survey assessed the appropriateness of the East Africa Customs and Freight Forwarding Practicing Certificate (EACFFPC) in addressing the needs and requirements of modern-day customs agents, freight forwarders and warehousing operations from the perspective of the employers, customers, and principals.
Other areas of focus were on bench marking the curriculum in its current form with other professional training and capacity building initiatives in other regions.
The curriculum update is building on the existing EACFFPC program by introducing a higher level of learning.
Since 2007 when the EACFFPC training programme was started, over 6000 customs agents and freight forwarders have qualified from the program in the region. TMEA has been supporting the implementation of this programme since 2011 to equip agents with desirable competencies in the discharge of their functions in order to enhance compliance, professionalism and facilitate trade.
Last year, the Freight Forwarding fraternity adopted a new policy framework that now requires firms seeking customs agency and bonded warehouse license to have at least one manager or CEO or Director holding the EACFFPC in addition to meeting the previous requirement of two staff dealing directly with customs.
Next steps of the curriculum development will involve submitting the draft to other industry stakeholders that are not part of NCIC for their views before it is finally validated.
