Defining a comprehensive international strategy for human resource development for port communities in developing countries is the objective of a meeting to be organized by UNCTAD and the Port of Leixões in Porto (Portugal) from 13 to 16 May 2002. The meeting will bring together more than 60 port directors, human resource managers and representatives of merchant marine and transport ministries from developing and developed countries.
For the last five years, UNCTAD has been successfully developing and implementing pilot training projects - such as the certificate for modern management of ports - in Benin, Gabon and Senegal. In Porto, representatives of those countries will present their experiences to port managers and human resource managers from Angola, Belgium, Brazil, Cape Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Cote d´Ivoire, France, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Norway, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Spain, Togo, Tunisia and the United Republic of Tanzania. On the basis of these pilot experiences, participants should define, adopt and budget action plans for the training of port managers according to their working language (English, French or Portuguese) through regional networks of ports and training institutions.
The strategy to be defined in Porto should revolve around four axes:
- an integrated approach to capacity-building and training
- forging partnerships among port training institutions
- the use of distance-learning techniques
- and the development of an Internet platform to exchange information and promote interaction.
These elements resulted from two independent evaluations of UNCTAD human resource development programmes conducted in 2001. Following these evaluations, UNCTAD training and port experts started to develop a course on information and communication technologies for port communities in cooperation with the ports of Ghent and Antwerp (Belgium), Valencia (Spain) and the Indonesia Port Corporation. Other topics will be chosen in Porto in order to respond to the wide-ranging training needs of the port communities.
UNCTAD also created a website hosting a platform for its e-learning activities as well as a virtual network of partners in its port training projects.
