The Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA) has announced the awardees for the 11th Annual Student Competition for a Safe Affordable Ferry. Winning teams receive monetary awards and are invited to speak about their work at an international conference. This year, the venue will be Interferry’s 48th annual conference, to be held in Marrakesh, Morocco, on October 28 to 29, 2024.
For this year's WFSA competition, the terms of reference (TOR) called for a Ro-Pax vessel to accommodate 150 to 200 passengers, as well as space for cargo and 15 to 20 four-wheeled vehicles, which could include lorries. The vessel is intended to ply a shallow stretch of the Niger River in southern Nigeria’s Anambra State, from Onitsha Jetty to Idah Jetty and from Onitsha Jetty to Ndoni Jetty.
The WFSA said Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, and its surrounding region have seen a dramatic expansion of ferry services since 2007, when only one route was operating. Presently, there are 365 ferries serving two million passengers monthly through 19 routes, calling at 12 terminals.
The Lagos State Governor recently commissioned 15 additional ferries, built to international standards by Caverton Marine, a Lagos-based company. Ten more ferries are to be commissioned by the end of the year.
However, ferries operating outside of Lagos, in other parts of Nigeria on the Niger River system, have had a poor safety record. Over the past two years, over 100 people died or were missing in six accidents.
The WFSA said this created an issue so serious that the President of Nigeria has voiced an intention to look closely at ferry safety. The TOR for this year’s competition were drafted by Nigerian Navy Lieutenant David Chukwudera Okafor. The WFSA meanwhile raises and transmits the monetary awards to the awardees: US$5,000 for first prize, US$3,000 for second prize, and US$1,000 for third prize.
The first-place award winning team from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), a university in Surabaya, Indonesia, designed an aluminium catamaran powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) with alternative power sources including solar panels and batteries. The vessel is 50 metres in length with a displacement of 209.6 tonnes and an estimated cost of US$2.7 million.
The WFSA said the ITS students overcame the challenges posed by limited shipbuilding facilities in Nigeria, by using the precut method, with construction in a shipyard in Port Harcourt. The vessel was then divided into several blocks for transportation by lorry for assembly at a small yard near the Niger River.
The second-place award winning team is from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka. The design is for an aluminium catamaran hull, 40 metres long and displacing 142 tonnes that would cost around US$800,000. The main fuel is CNG to run the electric motor, with solar power supplements. WFSA judges have expressed interest in the concept of a tiltable propeller system and the hydrokinetic turbine.
The third-place award winning team is from Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta. Their steel barge hull design with the precut fabrication technique helps reduce the cost of production, estimated at US$1.5 million. The vessel is powered by diesel-CNG with solar power supplement. There would be fore and aft loading, while a tilt-up thruster facilitates maintenance and repair.
