The Walvis Bay Corridor Group (WBCG) is a public-private partnership established in 2000 to promote the utilisation of the Walvis Bay Corridors to the Port of Walvis Bay in the Republic of Namibia.
The corridors, serving the port, is a network of transport routes from the neighbouring SADC countries of South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi. The corridors include:
a. the Port of Walvis Bay
b. the Trans Kalahari connecting Botswana and South Africa
c. the Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi Development Corridor connecting Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo
d. the Trans-Cunene connecting Angola, and
e. the Trans-Oranje Corridor, connecting South Africa.
All the above corridors are served with a good road infrastructure.
A reliable gateway
The Walvis Bay Corridor routes are positioned to give the country a competitive edge as a transport hub for all regional and international trade between Southern African Development Community (SADC), Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world. Through our world class commercial port at Walvis Bay, international shipping connection and the added advantage of being a gateway to the west coast of Africa, Namibia plays an increasingly important role in trade, linking the global economic centres with close to 300 million consumers in southern Africa.
Facilitating growth
The core function of the WBCG is business development, marketing, promoting trade facilitation and infrastructure development along the corridors in order to provide landlocked SADC countries access to transatlantic markets. Our public-private partnership set-up allows us to pool resources and authorities of both transport regulators and transport operators, thus effectively serving as a facilitation centre and one-stop shop coordinating trade along the Walvis Bay Corridors; linking Namibia and our ports to the rest of the Southern African region.
Developing SADC’s newest logistics hub
With the rapid growth in cargo volumes along the Walvis Bay Corridors through the Port of Walvis Bay and the benefits that the trade routes have to offer, Namibia has been identified to become the Logistics Hub for Southern Africa. The Port of Walvis Bay, with its deep-water depth and stable weather conditions, is strategically located to accelerate the growth of the SADC region by providing a good option of gateway for Southern Africa, hence costs and time savings are achieved along the Walvis Bay Corridors by offering the shortest possible regional route on the west coast.
Spearheading the effective implementation of the Namibia Logistics Hub Initiative, the WBCG engages in business development activities to encourage improved business relationship with the nation’s neighbour states, facilitate corridor infrastructure development and increase the cargo for ports linked to the Walvis Bay Corridors. We serve as a central chamber for the transport industry with an aim to develop Namibia as a gateway to the SADC region in terms of trade and exports.
WINDHOEK, 20 January 2015 – TransNamib’s acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hippy Tjivikua pictured during his welcoming remarks at the occasion of TransNamib’s commissioning of five locomotives. (Photo by Rafael Hangula) NAMPA
Corridor support projects
WBCG fittingly has a portfolio for projects and funding, to identify, formulate and manage corridor projects in order to ensure and mobilise international support and funding.
To further accelerate corridor development, the Ministry of Industrialisation, Trade and SME Development in Namibia, with the support of the Department of Trade in South Africa, has mandated the WBCG to identify ways of attracting investment along the Walvis Bay Corridors through the Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme. The SDI programme aims to increase the scale of economic activity and improve the diversity of economic activity along these corridors, thereby enhancing the economic growth of the region. The initial focus in terms of economic activities is on the mining, tourism, manufacturing, agriculture, fisheries and logistics sectors.
“A healthy workforce is a productive workforce”
Through the WBCG’s broad membership it offers a platform that facilitates and sup- ports the the provision of general wellness interventions along its corridors. The WBCG Wellness Service Programme is proactively involved in mainstreaming the HIV/AIDS response by assisting transport companies in Namibia to design and implement workplace HIV/AIDS wellness interventions. By doing so it reaches a wide, traditionally and generally perceived, high HIV and AIDS mobile group within the transport sector of Namibia.
The programme centres on developing and communicating a clear workplace policy, peer education, access to voluntary counselling and testing for the Namibian transport sector by facilitating the effective development and implementation of Wellness and HIV/AIDS work-place programmes. To address the health needs of hard to reach populations, such as long-distance truck drivers, the project has implemented a mixed model approach with a principle of combining static wellness centres and mobile wellness clinics with on-site HIV/AIDS and wellness workplace interventions.
Through the support from both the public and private stakeholders including the development partners, the WBCG advocates and facili- tates sustainable wellness initiatives. These smart partnerships also aim to provide technical assistance and strengthen the capacity of the WBCG to enable it to effectively facilitate the response of HIV/AIDS and other general wellness conditions within the workplace.
In the driving seat: Profile of the CEO
Mbahupu H. Tjivikua is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group. The Walvis Bay Corridor Group (WBCG) constitutes a Public Private Partnership (PPP) of transport and logistics stakeholders, who jointly work towards developing the various corridor routes through the ports of Walvis Bay and Lüderitz, while facilitating fast, safe, reliable and efficient transport along these routes.
As the CEO of the WBCG, he is leading the growth and development of new business along the main corridor routes in Namibia. The Walvis Bay corridors are an integrated system of well maintained tarred roads and rail networks from the Port of Walvis Bay via the Trans Kalahari, Trans-Cunene, Trans-Oranje and the Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi Development Corridor providing landlocked SADC countries access to transatlantic markets. These Corridors are positioned to give Namibia a competitive edge as a transport hub for all regional and international trade.
The Walvis Bay Corridor Group additionally manages a Wellness Service initiative, which aims to facilitate the effective development of employee workplace and transport corridor based HIV/AIDS and general employee wellness programmes. By doing so it reaches a wide, tradititonally and generally perceived high HIV and AIDS most vulnerable populations operating along the major transport corridors with health and wellness initiatives.
Mr. Tjivikua has close to 20 years of experience in the corporate sector, with 11 of those years spent in the transport and logistics industry. He was previously the Executive for Commercial and Marketing at TransNamib and also served in other senior roles such as Executive: Strategy and Stakeholder Management and Senior Manager: Operations.
He holds a Master of Science in Operations Management and Leadership from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Business School in Massachusetts, USA and an Honours Degree in Education from Rhodes University, South Africa. He also holds a Certificate in Project Management from the University of Stellenbosch Business School and a Certificate in Financial Management from the Namibia University of Science and Technology.
