Ethiopian Freight Forwarders and Shipping Agents Association (EFFSAA) and TradeMark Africa Limited signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Tuesday, October 4th, 2022.
At the event, the President of EFFSAA Mrs. Mrs. Elizabeth Getahun, Vice President of EFFSAA & Chairman of FIATA-AFI, Mr. Dawit Woubishet, Board Member of EFFSAA, Mr. Anteneh Alemu, Deputy Country Director of TradeMark, Mr. Abenet Bekele and Program Officer of Trademark for Horn of Africa, Mr. Yetmgeta Girma were present.
The officials gave a joint press conference after the MoU signing ceremony. They briefed the reason for calling a press conference and also disclosed the primary project of their agreement.
The main objective of the MoU is to support the activities to alleviate the lack of skilled human power in the country’s logistics sector, and the first project of the agreement is a capacity building program for the workforce to be guided by adequate knowledge and information who will be in charge of managing and operating the Free Trade Zone (FTZ), the first of its kind in the country, which was inaugurated in August 2022 at Dire Dawa.
Various trainings related to the Free Trade Zone will be provided to the government and private stakeholders of the Logistics Sector in Addis Abeba and Dire Dawa and will be done by the Association. TradeMark will support the project financially and also facilitate experience-sharing platforms on similar issues with other African countries since it has regional offices in more than 10 African states.
This project is expected to play a crucial role in the empowerment of the personnel who will be in charge of the FTZ.
As one of its pillars, Ethiopian Freight Forwarders and Shipping Agents Association strongly works on capacity building programs. In this regard, EFFSAA partnered with more than a couple of institutes to deliver various logistics-related training programs and will continue doing so.
TradeMark Limited (previously known as TradeMark East Africa) is an aid-for-trade organization that was established in 2010, with the aim of growing prosperity in East Africa through increased trade.
It works closely with regional intergovernmental organizations, and has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, with offices in EAC-Arusha, Burundi (Bujumbura), Democratic Republic of Congo (Bukavu), Djibouti (Djibouti), Ethiopia (Addis-Ababa), Somaliland (Hargeisa), Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda (Kigali), South Sudan (Juba), Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), Uganda (Kampala), and Zambia.
