Wednesday, 25 March 2015

ASECNA PARTNERS NAMA ON SINGLE AFRICAN SKY


A top level technical team of the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) led by its Director General, Mr Amadou Guitteye, has held crucial deliberations with officials of the Nigerian Airspace Managing Agency (NAMA), along with CEOs of other aviation agencies in Lagos on issues bordering on harmonious collaboration and partnership with Nigeria, aimed at further enhancing safety and seamlessness in airspace coordination within the AFI region.
According to a statement signed Mrs. Olajumoke Adetona, the Acting General Manager Public Affairs of  NAMA,  Mr Guitteye stated that their visit to Nigeria was pursuant to the Cotonou declaration of 2010 which harped on “the need for African ANSPs to move to a single African sky through close collaboration, coordination and partnership that would bring about a standardized, harmonized, seamless and interoperable CNS/ATM systems within intra and adjacent FIRs.” 
 The ASECNA boss noted that with the impending sectorization of Accra FIR which hitherto included Benin and Togo airspaces, soon to be taken over by ASECNA, there was the need to review letters of procedures with Nigeria, as the closest neighbour to ASECNA in the region.  Amadou also solicited collaboration in the area of cross-border search and rescue and training of critical manpower.
the Managing Director of NAMA, Engr. Ibrahim Abdulsalam noted that an inter-FIR collaboration with ASECNA who are all-round neighbours to Nigeria is a welcome development as it would be of mutual benefit to both parties and “we look forward to a very fruitful collaboration and cooperation between Nigeria and  ASECNA countries.’’
The ASECNA delegation which inspected facilities include the Control Tower, Equipment Room, VSAT Earth Station, Instrument Landing Systems, Localizers as well as the TRACON centre.

Speaking after the facility tour, the ASECNA DG described the facilities as excellent. ‘’We are very impressed about what we have seen today. From the navigational aids to the TRACON centre, we learnt a lot and it has given us more confidence in the ability of NAMA to guarantee safety of air navigation in the region. We also discovered from our interaction that Nigeria has very capable technical manpower managing these infrastructure and we shall continue to exchange ideas and technologies, all targeted at enhancing air safety on the continent of Africa.’’

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