A five day trip to south east Africa allowed Zak Stark – Forth Valley College’s Commercial Manager for Business Development – to promote the college’s expertise and skillset.
Working as part of a three college partnership along with Edinburgh and Dundee and Angus Colleges, the trip – organised by Scottish Development International – saw Zak visit Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) and Mozambique (Maputo) from 23-28 October.
With Dundee and Angus College focussing on sub-sea technology and expertise and Edinburgh College offering health and safety training, FVC were able to show how they can specialise in instrumentation, CompeEx, the training of Modern Apprentices and bring a wealth of experience in the oil and gas sector to the table.
Zak, said:
“These two countries are on the brink of developing large oil and gas industries and Forth Valley College were delighted to be invited to travel as part of a three college partnership to showcase what we could do to help them take the next steps in this industry.
“It went really well and we had a lot of good meetings and made a lot of good contacts. We had an especially good meeting with special advisers to the Tanzanian government who are looking to train their own citizens to monitor and maintain a new oil pipeline between Tanzania and Uganda. Hopefully something solid might well come from this and we look forward to exploring this further soon, but it is early days.
“All in all it was a fantastic experience and I met with some superb people. It was certainly very worthwhile and we hope several projects that were discussed will come to fruition.”