As the Federation of East African Freight Forwarders Associations (FEAFFA) takes stock of its achievements in its annual report, professional development of regional customs agents will remain a key area of focus in the coming years.
FEAFFA has partnered with TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) to implement a continuing professional development (CPD) program for customs agents and freight forwarders in the EAC region to enhance service delivery to the world’s best practices.
The initiative aims at keeping customs agents and freight forwarders abreast with the industry dynamics and equipping them with requisite competencies for the provision of high end to end logistics services.
In the recent months, a regional CPD policy framework, implementation guidelines and tools have been developed and adopted by the Curriculum Implementation Committee (CIC).
Uganda and Rwanda were selected to pilot the program and are making preparations to start CPD activities under the framework of the National Curriculum Implementation Committees (NCICs). Their experiences are expected to inform rollout of the program in other countries of the region.
The development of the curriculum has been a long journey. A few years back, a high level FEAFFA delegation paid a courtesy visits to the Commissioners of Kenya Revenue Authority and Tanzania Revenue Authority in Zanzibar and Dar to brief them on the progress made in capacity building of the industry.
The meetings also sought their input on expected industry role in enhancing compliance and mobilize them to pronounce themselves on the East Africa Customs Freight Forwarding Practicing Certificate (EACFFPC) interventions during the programme’s High Level Policy Meeting (HLPM).
HLPM was held in Zanzibar, Tanzania on 20th February 2019. It adopted and revised implementation framework for the EACFFPC- increasing to three the number of EACFFPC graduates in a firm as a requirement for licensing of customs agents and bonded warehouse operators. At least one of the three will be a manager, CEO or the director.
The meeting also endorsed the curriculum review process to address limitations of progression, duration, equivalence and entry requirements, development of a CPD and recognition of training of the Customs agents and Customs bonded warehouse keepers in the East African Community legal instruments.
Prior to EACFFPC HLPM, another meeting was held in Zanzibar to finalize the draft policy framework. It was attended by the CIC chair, the EAC Principal Custom officers – capacity building, FEAFFA secretariat and revenue authorities from the region.
The second CIC meeting was held in Dar to review the proposed project work plan before its final submission to TMEA for funding. CIC made some key recommendations for incorporation in the preparation of the project work plan before it was submitted to TMEA.
The third CIC meeting was held in Kampala to review and adopt the CPD working documents in preparation for the start of the regional CPD program for customs agents and freight forwarders. The meeting adopted the regional policy framework, implementation guidelines and tools for the CPD program and identified the pilot countries.
In September 2019, research consultants had done a baseline survey to provide data on the impact of EACFFPC training, hints on the curriculum review, a sustainability model for the training activities, assess the readiness of the freight logistics industry for the expanded training capacity and to absorb newly trained freight forwarders and warehouse operators into the logistics job market; and develop an appropriate monitoring and evaluation approach and tools for effective implementation of the training activities.
FEAFFA is now working on the final hit on program rollout and has already engaged the services of a Public Relations expert who is meant to market and publicize CPD activities in Uganda and promote uptake of the programme in the country on pilot basis.
FEAFFA is also working on an integrated CPD system that will coordinate the piloting activities that are expected to take place in Rwanda as well.
The system will also have a database of East African Customs and Freight Forwarding Certificate (EACFFPC) graduates and trainers of the EACFFPC course and information of the CPD points for each of the graduates. The training will be coordinated by the National Curriculum Implementation Committee (NCIC) in Uganda and a schedule has been prepared to be distributed when conducting publicity.
As part of the preparations for piloting, a roadmap on how the program will be piloted was also developed last year. The roadmap included the development of a comprehensive stakeholder analysis and mapping, a training needs assessment (TNA) and a CPD calendar.
The CPD will test three major components; technical competencies, emerging issues and matters on leadership and personal development. Freight Logistics Industry practitioners will be expected to have a minimum number of CPD hours per year as part of the requirements for the renewal of their customs agency licenses.
