Senegal facing tighter shipping laws

Relatives following soldiers carrying photographs of victims

The Senegal ferry disaster has brought the regulation of Africa's shipping industry into renewed focus.

Ships which make international voyages are subject to global safety standards, drawn-up by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) of the United Nations.

Safety checks are common, and vessels which fail can be impounded even away from their home nations.

But the ferry that sank was on an internal journey, travelling in Atlantic coastal waters between the south of Senegal and its capital Dakar in the north.

The tragedy claimed almost 1,000 lives, and the Senegal government has now revealed that the ferry was carrying hundreds more people than the official limit when it sank last week.

New rules drafted

It was with such domestic vessels in mind that the IMO issued a set of Model Safety Regulations for African nations just a year ago.

The move had been triggered by the capsize of the ferry Bukoba on Lake Victoria in 1996, with the loss of over 500 lives.

The rules cover crew training, seaworthiness, safety equipment and the setting of limits on passenger numbers.

Last autumn the regulations were adopted by twelve African countries, including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe, along with most nations around the Great Lakes.

Senegal was not among the countries that accepted the new rules and industry experts say widely varying standards of enforcement can create dangers even where good regulation exists.

But the sinking of the ferry, and the loss of so many lives, is expected to renew calls for tighter regulation of a shipping industry whose failings are widely-known, but only patchily controlled.