The 11th Our Ocean Conference (OOC11) slated for mid June in Mombasa arrives at an opportune moment for Kenya’s entire maritime sector and its key institutions. Hosted across Mombasa and Kilifi counties, the summit lands on the doorstep of the academies that train the region’s workforce.
Since 2014 the conference has generated more than 2,900 commitments worth over US$169 billion, and its Executive Business and Investment Forum convenes industry leaders and institutional investors to catalyze ocean solutions. For Kenya’s training institutions and its regulator alike, that places funding, partnerships, and policy direction within reach.
Each Kenya’s training institution brings complementary strengths. Bandari Maritime Academy, the national maritime academy, delivers KMA-approved STCW courses and continues to pursue practical infrastructure such as a training vessel; the conference offers access to foreign academies and shipping lines that can provide berths aboard, simulators, and instructor exchanges.
The Technical University of Mombasa, strong in marine engineering, maritime management, shipping, and logistics, can attach research and capacity-building components to commitments and align its programs with green-shipping and port-digitization skills.
Logistics-focused providers, namely the Kenya School of Revenue Administration, Coast International College, and the Maritime and Management Institute of East Africa, can build placement pipelines with ports and freight firms, the last leveraging its validation by the UK Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers.
Mount Kenya University brings a timely asset in its new KSh 30 million ship bridge simulator at the Malindi Maritime Academy in Kilifi, a facility that replicates real vessel operations for navigation and safety training, that the university is working to have formally accredited, and that sits within a host county well suited to technical tours or side events.
Together these form an ecosystem rather than a hierarchy: a national seafarer base, engineering and research depth, supply-chain talent, and simulation capability. Partners attending OOC11 are likely seeking exactly this breadth, and institutions that present themselves as parts of one coherent national offering will prove more compelling than those competing in isolation.
The shared advantages are tangible: heightened visibility with regulators and investors, valuable exposure for students and faculty through side events, and the chance to sign memoranda of understanding while the global maritime community is physically present in Kenya.
The Kenya Maritime Authority, as the sector’s regulator and accreditor, holds perhaps the broadest stake. Its first gain is international standing. Kenya has previously worked to avoid being locked out of the International Maritime Organization’s White List of authorized seafarer trainers, and a high-profile summit lets the Authority showcase compliance, benchmark national standards against global best practice, and reinforce confidence in Kenyan certificates abroad.
The second gain is regulatory diplomacy. The conference assembles counterpart maritime authorities, opening the door to bilateral agreements on mutual recognition of certificates, port-state control cooperation, and harmonized regional standards. Such relationships are difficult to build remotely and far easier to advance when decision-makers share a venue.
The third gain is ecosystem-building. Every training vessel, simulator, and partnership the institutions secure expands the base that the Authority oversees and regulates. A stronger, better-equipped training sector directly serves its mandate to grow national maritime capacity, raise the quality of locally trained seafarers, and reduce the cost of training Kenyan seafarers abroad.
The fourth gain is policy alignment. The Authority can use the event to position Kenya’s regulatory framework around emerging priorities such as decarbonized shipping, digital port operations, and sustainable trade, ensuring national rules keep pace with the direction of the global industry rather than lagging behind it.
For the Authority, then, the conference is less about a single transaction than about steering the whole system. By using Kenya’s moment as host to lift the standing, coordination, and capacity of the entire maritime training sector at once, it can convert a few days of global attention into lasting institutional gains that outlast the closing ceremony.
What the Kenya Ports Authority Stands to Gain
The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), operator of the Port of Mombasa and the wider national port network, is arguably the single largest commercial beneficiary of hosting. As the principal gateway for Kenya and its landlocked neighbours, handling over 2.1 million TEUs at Mombasa in 2025, KPA sits at the exact intersection of trade and ocean health that the conference exists to address.
Hosting on its doorstep is a showcase opportunity: KPA can present its Green Port Policy, its expanded capacity, and milestones such as the maiden call of an LNG-powered vessel to position Mombasa as East Africa’s climate-smart maritime hub before a global audience of shipping lines and investors.
The substantive gains lie in investment and technology. KPA’s Green Port Policy (2024–2028) already commits it to shore power for docked vessels, hybrid and electric cargo-handling equipment, and stronger marine-pollution controls, initiatives that map directly onto the conference’s blue-economy, climate, and marine-pollution action areas.
The Executive Business and Investment Forum is precisely where KPA can attract financing and partners for these projects, for port digitization, and for alternative-fuel bunkering, while drawing on the green-port and “digital ocean” models that featured prominently at Busan.
KPA can also register its own voluntary commitment, joining a global accountability framework in the way host ports such as Busan have done in successive years, lending international credibility to its decarbonization targets.
Beyond Mombasa, the platform supports KPA’s wider agenda, from Lamu and the LAPSSET corridor to inland and lake ports and blue-economy ventures, by drawing trade-corridor investment and partners. And because a modern, greener port demands a modern workforce, KPA stands to benefit from the same training partnerships the academies pursue, linking port operations directly to the talent pipeline that keeps Kenya competitive.
Precedent from Busan 2025: What Institutions Gained
The value on offer is not hypothetical. The last edition, the 10th Our Ocean Conference held in Busan, Republic of Korea, in April 2025 under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Action,” drew more than 3,300 delegates from 113 countries and produced close to 280 voluntary commitments worth about US$9.1 billion, with roughly US$4.5 billion directed into the sustainable blue economy.
Importantly for training providers, more than ten of those commitments established or expanded marine and environmental education or career-training programmes, and nearly twenty strengthened maritime-security and counter-IUU capacity, much of it in West Africa and the Pacific, regions whose challenges mirror Kenya’s own.
Named institutions show what attendance can translate into. The World Maritime University in Malmo, the IMO’s postgraduate centre of excellence for maritime education and capacity building, is a recurring presence at global ocean summits and a magnet for donor-funded study; its Lloyd’s Register Foundation fellowships have already benefited Kenyans, with a Kenyan fellow completing maritime-affairs study there and returning home with advanced expertise.
The host nation’s institutions gained too: Korea, home to the Korea Maritime and Ocean University and the Korea Institute of Maritime and Fisheries Technology, used its hosting to deepen international training cooperation, including with Kenya, whose delegations have since engaged both institutions on cadet training and a training vessel.
The pattern is clear. Institutions that attend rarely leave with a single cheque; they leave with fellowships, partnerships, capacity-building commitments, and visibility that convert into students, equipment, and recognition in the months that follow. For Kenya’s academies in 2026, the Busan precedent is at once a benchmark and an invitation.
Ultimately, OOC11 rewards preparation. The institutions and the regulator that arrive with clear objectives, concrete asks, and a unified national story stand to leave Mombasa with the partnerships, funding, and recognition that turn blue-economy ambition into trained professionals working on the water. The opportunity is rare, the audience is global, and the groundwork laid during these few days in Kenya could shape the country’s maritime trajectory for the coming decade and well beyond it.
Harry Arigi is a Maritime consultant and MIHR. He comments on regional trade, maritime logistics, safety and development policy.