Z9November 24-30 2016

MOMENTS of ecstasy on the rigorous path of per-sonal development are always cherished.

As a young professional in this highly competi-tive global village one certainly has to rise up and be counted.

Born on 10 June 1991 in a town called Chiredzi in Zimbabwe, Lorraine Zhou grew up dedicated, hardworking and well behaved.

In high school she specialised in the commerce field which led her to study a degree in Fiscal Stud-ies. Her journey in the freight forwarding industry began in 2014 as an intern clearing clerk at Allen Wack & Shepherd Global Freight in Harare.

Her inherent self-drive, industrious work ethic and zeal to learn marvelled the Allen Wack and Shepherd Global Freight management who then hired her as a clearing clerk upon completion of her studies in 2015. Despite being the youngest and fairly new in the field, she defied all odds and made history by being the first ever Zimbabwean to par-ticipate in the YIFFY Award.

The Young International Freight Forwarder Award demonstrates recognition by FIATA and its participating sponsors of the need to develop qual-ity in the forwarding industry and to reward young talent with valuable training opportunities. The award is open to any young freight forwarder who will be no more than 32 years old in the year when the dissertation is written, with two years' full-time forwarding experience, the latter being preferable but not mandatory. The award comprises two weeks of practical and academic training, one week of aca-demic training and one week of practical training based in one of the TT Club's regional centres (Lon-don, Hong Kong or New Jersey) plus one year's free subscription to the International Transport Journal (ITJ), Switzerland and International Freighting Weekly (UK).

Project summaryZimbabwe being a landlocked country continues

to face inherent structural challenges in the efficient transportation of cargo thus affecting its overall economy development and external trade. Her dis-sertation therefore sought to address various com-plexities faced in trading in a landlocked country and the use of multi modal transport to effective freight forwarding. The export cargo covered cotton lint while import products were turbines and steel metal via Durban Port. She highlighted complexi-ties encountered in the voyage of such commodities and the remedies thereof to ensure timely delivery of cargo.

Journey to winningBreaking new ground was not always going to

be easy since there was no local history of partici-pation to base on. However, she had to brave the weather and face the challenge solely motivated by the confidence bestowed upon her by the national secretariat. After getting insight of the competition expectations, Zhou came up with a research topic proposal highlighting various complexities faced in freight forwarding. Commencement of the work en-tailed a series of consultations with the supervisor, work mates and clients under research. The process of gathering all the relevant information was cum-bersome and time consuming considering that she also had to meet work deadlines. However, her inter personal skills enabled her to foster co-operation amongst her workmates, supervisor and optimised allocation time between her work and dissertation.

Future plansIn tandem with the name of the award, Zhou

views this accolade as a showcase of her potential and vows not to sit on her laurel but instead strive to enhance her knowledge and expertise in the freight forwarding industry. This will enable her to effec-tively mentor and inspire other young freight for-warders to walk in her footsteps. She wants to enrol for the International Diploma in Freight Forwarding Practice offered by FIATA to enhance knowledge and understanding in the subject area. She is also look-ing forward to establish a structure in Zimbabwe of Young freight forwarders body under the auspices of the Shipping Forwarders and Agents Association

Young Zim freight forwarder wins YIFFY award

in Zimbabwe. Local and global awareness of freight forwarding as a career among the schooling youth and general public needs massive improvement. In this vein, Lorraine vows to actively participate in lo-cal career guidance programmes for the youth as a capacity building initiative.

From left: SFAAZ vice president Sheila Mashiri, SFAAZ CEO Joseph Musariri and Lorraine Zhou.

Z10 November 24-30 2016

SFAAZ: LORRAINE ZHOU CONGRATULATORY SUPPLEMENT

REGION AFRICA/MIDLE EAST (RAME)

THE Shipping and Forwarding Agents’ Association of Zimbabwe (SFAAZ) is a voluntary association of shipping lines, freight forwarders, customs clearing agents, bonded warehouse operators and in-house clearing importers and exporters. It was founded around 1955 with a mandate to represent the in-terests of its member companies. Estimates are that members of the association handle in excess of 95 percent of the country’s commercial imports and ex-ports.

The customs clearing members of the association play a very significant role in import revenue collec-tion on behalf of government.

The association also has a mandate from its membership and an expectation from its stakehold-ers, including government, to be the vanguard of a very high level of professionalism and to provide competent and relevant training programmes for the industry.

International affiliation•SFAAZ is a member of the Federation of Clear-

ing and Freight Forwarding Association of Southern Africa (FCFASA) and the International Federation of Freight Forwarding Associations (FIATA).

SFAAZ training programmes

SFAAZ offers internationally accredited FIATA Diploma in Freight Forwarding. The Diploma is bro-ken down into two parts, Customs Legislation and Procedures (CLP) and Freight Forwarding Practice (FFP). We also offer Customs Legislation and Pro-cedures Certificate (three months) and a variety of tailor made short courses. The association has de-veloped modules that it provides for all of its train-ing courses.

Being a member of FIATA has made SFAAZ a very critical player on the African continent. Its training programme is accredited by the world body, making Zimbabwe one of only seven countries that offer the internationally accredited course in Africa and only the second country in East and Southern Africa, to-gether with South Africa, to do so. The FIATA Di-ploma in Freight Forwarding is conducted in Harare and Bulawayo through Speciss College, Premier Business School and Trust Academy which are the only colleges that are affiliated by the association. Graduates of the diploma programme are sort after in the industry regionally and abroad.

The national Customs Legislation and Proce-dures) Diploma Course and the Freight Forwarding Practice (FFP) Diploma Course that the association offers are both accredited with FIATA. Successful completion of the two programmes leads to award of the FIATA international diploma in Freight For-warding Practice. The course modules provided by the association are tailor-made to meet the needs of industry, making SFAAZ graduates very highly marketable. The diploma courses are open to both school leavers and current industry practitioners. There are also various short courses offered by the SFAAZ that are specifically designed for the needs of industry.

What is the YIFFA Award?The Young International Freight Forwarder

Award (YIFFA) demonstrates recognition by FIATA and its participating sponsors of the need to devel-op quality in the forwarding industry and to reward young talent with valuable training opportunities. The award is open to any young freight forwarder who will be no more than 32 years old in the year when the dissertation is written, with two years' full-time forwarding experience, the latter being preferable but not mandatory. The award comprises two weeks of practical and academic training, one week of academic training and one week of practi-cal training based in one of the TT Club's regional centres (London, Hong Kong or New Jersey) plus one year's free subscription to the International Transport Journal (ITJ), Switzerland and Interna-tional Freighting Weekly (UK).

Each FIATA association member is entitled to pre-sent one candidate who fits the following criteria:

•A student having recently qualified for the FIA-TA Diploma in Freight Forwarding

•A student from that has completed the associa-tions professional exams. To Z11

Who is SFAAZ?

Lorraine Zhou receiving her YIFFY Award.

TT Club manager Michael Yarwood (left) and Lorraine Zhou after receiving her award.

November 24-30 2016 Z11

SFAAZ: LORRAINE ZHOU CONGRATULATORY SUPPLEMENT

From Z10Upon selection by the National

Forwarding Association, and advice to the Award Administrator, the can-didate will be given three months to write a dissertation on the topic ad-vised.

Full details of the topic will be communicated directly to the can-didate by the Award Administrator and will be accompanied by other information to enable the candidate to compose the dissertation.

The dissertation and conclusion shall be between 4 000 and 6 000 words (maximum 6 000 words) in length and, the entire dissertation shall be written in English.

The steering group will appoint the judges.

The prize may not be awarded solely on the basis of the disserta-tion but consideration may be taken of the candidate’s personal achieve-ments, e.g. examination results, outstanding performance or innova-tion, as provided in the statement from the National Forwarding As-sociation.

The judges will select a winner from each of the four FIATA regions: Americas; Europe; Africa and Mid-dle East; Asia Pacific.

Each regional winner will be in-vited to attend the FIATA World Congress.

They will be required to pro-vide a concise Presentation of their Dissertation Cases to the Steering

Committee for Final Assessment to determine the Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year.

Each regional winner will receive a prize consisting of: Attendance at FIATA World Congress to be present-ed with a Regional Winner’s Certifi-cate and a personal trophy.

FIATA will arrange for each of the regional winners to participate in the Annual World Congress free of any registration fees and accommo-dation costs.

TT Club will provide the hotel accommodation and FIATA will pro-vide US$ 1 000 towards the return air ticket to the congress and one year’s free subscription to Interna-tional Transport Journal.

Lorraine Zhou: What did she achieve?

SFAAZ presented Lorraine Zhou for the 2016 YIFFA.

After the judges had finished their marking and the steering group completed their deliberations the four regional winners were se-lected as:•Africa/Middle East: Lorraine Zhou, Zimbabwe •Americas: Evgeny Kapustin, Can-ada•Asia/Pacific: Shanon Gould, Aus-tralia•Europe: ostiantyn Hapii, Ukraine

These four will were invited to the FIATA World Congress in Dub-lin, Ireland to receive their regional certificates and trophies.

Who is SFAAZ?

THE World Economic Forum recent-ly released its annual Global Com-petitiveness Report, which this year focused on declining trade openness and the threat it poses to global growth, as well as the increasingly important need for innovation.

The continent’s results were a mixed bag.

Regionally, competitiveness in sub-Saharan Africa weakened due to the deteriorating macroeconom-ic conditions in the region, mainly driven by the slump in commodity prices. The slow growth has nega-tively affected the African financial sector, tightening credit conditions and reducing liquidity.

Still, Africa improved scores in business environment, information and communication technologies, and infrastructure.

However, the improvement in said scores has not countered the poor performance in other sectors used to assess the global competi-tiveness index such as institutions and investment in education.

Globally, Mauritius and South Africa are Africa’s most competitive nations, ranking at 45th and 47th respectively.

There were some big movers this year, too.

Despite its political and currency woes, the report praises South Af-rica’s financial markets, infrastruc-ture development and commitment to education.

Rwanda improved its ranking by six positions as it strengthened its macroeconomic climate, infra-structure development, and educa-tional investment. Zambia’s rank worsened by 22 positions amid the drop in copper prices and the politi-cal uncertainty which preceded this year’s presidential election.

The World Trade organisation also released their annual World Trade Report 2016: Levelling the trading field for SMEs.

The report aims to encourage the participation of Africa’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in glob-al value chains, as studies on Afri-can firms have shown that the par-ticipation of SMEs in international markets promotes growth and em-ployment as well as enhanced pro-ductivity and innovation.

The report also highlights the ex-clusion of Africa’s SMEs (and large firms) from global value chains. When measuring direct exports as a percentage of total sales of SMEs, in the manufacturing sector, African SMEs only export three percent of their total sales, against 8,7 percent in developing Asia. Additionally, the report finds that, once established, African SMEs take twice as long to start exporting than Asian SMEs.

The World Bank’s Office of the Chief Economist for the Africa re-gion also released its bi-annual re-port entitled, Africa’s Pulse.

The region’s growth forecast was cut to 1,6 percent, revising the 3,3 percent growth figure predicted in the April publication.

The revision was driven by the declining growth in Nigeria and South Africa, being steeper than first perceived.

Added to the list of worrying factors are: political uncertainty, droughts and security concerns. Still, the report states that the growth story across sub-Saharan Af-rica is not homogenous.

Despite the declining growth in the region as a whole, a few African countries — Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania — are computing growth rates which surpass six percent. Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal have be-come some of the region’s top per-formers. The report states that these countries have strong monetary and fiscal policies, improved busi-ness environment, effective institu-tions and diverse exports. — Africa Growth Initiative

IN another first, Econet Wireless has through its innovative mobile payment solution EcoCash part-nered with Harare City Council’s parking unit, City Parking (Pvt) Ltd to enable Ecocash customers pay for parking services via Eco-Cash.

The development means all City Parking marshals within the Harare Central Business District now accept EcoCash payments for car parking services. City Parking holds the largest share of parking bays in Harare CBD including Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel and Parklane Parkades.

Econet Wireless CEO Douglas Mboweni said, “We are humbled and thankful to City Parking (Pvt) Ltd for this deal that we have en-tered into.

We realise the need to ensure that day to day micro-transac-tions are formalised as we move to the next level of the financial inclusion lifecycle.

As part of promoting a cash-less society in our country, we would like to bring to our cus-tomers the convenience, security, affordability and acceptability of mobile money payments to buy literally everything, from super-markets, service stations, flea markets, fruit and vegetable in-formal markets.”

Natalie Jabangwe-Morris, General Manager for EcoCash added: “There is no longer need for our customers to carry cash for car parking services. Instead

of going through the process of dialling *151#, all City Parking marshals have also been equipped with EcoCash Ta! devices.

“EcoCash ta! allows our cus-tomers to tap specially coded stickers linked to their EcoCash wallets against City Parking mar-shals’ enabled micro point-of-sale devices. The value of the trans-action will be automatically and instantly deducted from the cus-

tomer’s EcoCash account.” She said the payment process

is efficient and fast with no PIN required from customers when paying for goods and services of up to US$3. “To City Parking mar-shals and our customers alike, no more need to worry about secu-rity of carrying cash and looking for change as all their cash is safe in their devices and wallets re-spectively.”

Global Competitiveness Report, World Trade Report and Africa’s

Pulse published

City Parking marshals equipped with EcoCash Ta! devices

…No pin code required for transactions of US$3, below

Econet Wireless CEO Douglas Mboweni