Maritime Trainers’ Collaboration Capable of Addressing Youths Unemployment in Africa-Brooks, Ag. VC RMU Accra
Dr. Jethro Brooks, Acting Vice Chancellor of the Regional Maritime University in Accra was a guest at the 2025 Graduation Ceremony of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, Akwa Ibom
He told Ismail Aniemu that it’s time African maritime trainers worked together to fashion out African solutions for Africa maritime training challenges
Brooks also took JournalNG through Ghana’s journey to greater acceptability of the country’s Certificate of Competency and commended the Maritime Academy of Nigeria for quality training setting after a guided tour of the school’s facilities. He also hinted of a memorandum of understanding to be signed in future by both institutions
(Q) Give us an overview of RMU, what it has done so far and how you got to where you are today as a reputable trainer of first choice in Anglophone West and Central Africa?
The Regional Maritime University has been existing since 1957, during the former Ghana Nautical College period. The university has come a very long way. It’s over sixty-five years. It was established to ensure that maritime education and training become one of the best, not only in West and Central Africa, but beyond West and Central Africa.
Originally, it was Ghana Nautical College up to 1983, then it became the Regional Maritime Academy with five countries. In 2007, it became a university. Since then, it has been,
but just this year, now there are six countries and Guinea-Bissau has joined. It’s now Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
(Q) The Ghana Certificate of Competency (COC) is highly recognised.How did you get there?
Professionalism is the reason. It’s just going from one place to another. We just make sure that quality is one of the best things we do. The kind of people we hire, the kind of system we have and the check and balance we put in place to ensure that we provide the best kind of services we provide to the seafarers are other reasons.
(Q) What is the level of cooperation and support you get from the Ghana Maritime Administration(GMA) ?
Fully, without the GMA, we ourselves can hardly operate because of the COC and STCW(Standards of Training, Certification and Watch keeping) programmes. We all outstay ourselves because we are the training arm and they are the regulators, so they regulate everything we do.We have a very good marriage between the Ghana Maritime Authority and the Regional Maritime University.
(Q) From your assessment, how do you see Maritime Academy of Nigeria?
Basically, I think they are trying. I’m impressed with the cadets, the rector and what they are doing here. Basically, they can develop but as I said, the Africa’s problem needs African solutions.
We need to collaborate as Africans to ensure that we can address the unemployment situation of our youths, not only in one country or one region, but across the regions of Africa.
(Q) What are the prospects of collaboration between RMU and MAN, Oron?
It’s very high. That will soon happen but we’re just trying to cross the T’s and dot the I’s on the MOU then we’ll have a legal arrangement between the two institutions.
(Q) What should we expect from that?
You should expect research, student exchange ,faculty exchange and a lot of things related to maritime education.
(Q) As part of the faculty exchange, you offered admission to the two best graduating students.
No, I didn’t offer direct admission. As I said, we discussed with the rector to see how these good students can have entry into the university, so whichever way it is, we’ll do our best to make sure that they are admitted.However, we didn’t offer them admission directly.
(Q) Are you going to put them through the usual, rigorous process of admission, or are you going to give them a full session?
Well, for the fact that they did two years of cadetship already , we’ll just look at those grades and what they have done, compare them to ours and see how we can get them in if the arrangement goes well.
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