The African Ministers of Transport held a meeting by Videoconference on 23rd April 2020 on the invitation of H.E Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy at African Union Commission.
The objective of this meeting was to discuss the urgent actions to support the continental strategy on COVID-19 pandemic as a way to implement the recommendations of the AU Heads of State and Government held on 3rd April 2020 by Video Conference. The second objective was to discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to the transport sector and propose a recovery measures to be implemented by AU Member States, African transport stakeholders and financial partners.
The African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, H.E. Dr Amani Abou-Zeid expressed her gratitude to the Hon. Ministers for honouring the invitation and further highlighted the negative impacts of COVID-19 to African Transport industry including important losses of jobs related to transport services, grounding of aircrafts and air transport related services, complete shutdown of major public transport services which caused disruption of the supply chain for important food and medical supplies. She appealed to the Hon.Ministers to propose relief measures to help the industry recover immediately once the COVID-19 pandemic is contained.
The meeting was chaired by H.E. Didier Mazenga Mukanzu, Minister of Transport of the Democratic of Republic of Congo and chair of the Transport Sub-Committee and was attended by the members of the Bureau including the Representative of the Minister of Transport, 1st Vice-president Arab Republic of Egypt as 1st Vice-Chair, Representative of Hon. Minister of Public Work and Transport of Kingdom of Lesotho, as 2nd Vice-Chair, H.E Omar Ahmed Omar State Minister of Transport Somalia as 3rd Vice-Chair, H.E Ms Zourehatou Kassa-Traore, Minister of Transport of Togo as Rapporteur. And H.E. Fikile Mbalula, Minister of Transport of South Africa, also attended the meeting.
In his remarks, the Chair of the meeting, H.E Didier Mazenga Mukanzu thanked AUC for convening the meeting and called for concerted efforts by all African States to contain the negative impacts of COVID-19 to the transport industry. He emphasized a need to provide necessary support to the transport companies to allow continuity of the important services needed to contain the pandemic. H.E Ms Zourehatou Kassa-Traore, Minister of Transport of Togo highlighted the important role that the African airlines are still providing to manage the COVID-19 crisis citing an example of ASKY Company currently supporting Togo to keep its supply chain open for critical cargo flights and humanitarian assistance. H.E. Fikile Mbalula, Minister of Transport of South Africa appreciated the initiative by the African Union Commission to have this regular high-level dialogue among the Ministers of Transport in order to find concrete recovery measures for the industry.
The Representative of the Minister of Transport, 1st Vice-president Arab Republic of Egypt, informed the Bureau that Egypt has maintained air cargo and port operations and is ready to support the delivery of medical supplies and equipments provided by World Health Organization (WHO) to other African States in the efforts to contain COVID-19. Representative of Hon. Minister of Public Work and Transport of Kingdom of Lesotho also joined other Ministers to point out important measures to assist the transport industry to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. These include effective implementation of the preventive measures provided by Africa CDC and WHO.
The Ministers made a call to all AU Member States to ensure that airports, ports and important humanitarian corridors are open to support the delivery of important food and medical supplies in the on-going efforts to contain COVID-19 pandemic. They further appreciated the initiative taken by Egypt to assist all AU Member States in the delivery of critical medical and food supplies and made a call to other States to do the same to support the continental Strategy.
The Ministers thanked the African Union Commission and its partners for the on-going work to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and committed to support the on-going activities in close collaboration with all the stakeholders.
