City of Glasgow College is to open the first maritime training college in Angola next month, a year later than originally planned.

The Centro De Formacao Maritima De Angola (CFMA) has recruited a total of 48 students for two HND courses in nautical science and marine engineering. Over the coming years, it is hoped that the college will expand significantly.

Calum Maclean, head of international partnerships at City of Glasgow College, said that there was the capacity to accommodate and teach more than 250 students on campus.

The students will complete their first year at the CFMA, which is based 270km south of the Angolan capital Luanda, and then come to Glasgow to spend the second year of their course at City of Glasgow College - a similar set-up to partnerships the college has run with a number of international institutions.

Teaching staff have been seconded to Africa from Glasgow. John Lloyd, a former director at a maritime training college in Australia, has been recruited as head of the centre.

“The way the centre has been developed has demonstrated the commitment to creating a long-term asset for maritime training,” he told TESS. “It is a brave new dawn for Angola.”

Mr Lloyd said that he was excited about the challenge of setting up a world-class training college from scratch in a developing country.

While the training college in Angola is the first of its kind, City of Glasgow College already has well-established partnerships with four institutions in India and one in Pakistan.

The maritime college has been built in partnership with Sonangol Shipping Angola, which is providing most of the funding, and shipping company Stena Africa. It was initially set to open in August 2012.

julia.belgutay@tess.co.uk.