Ms Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, during the signing ceremony of Memorandum of
Understand (MoU) that will give effect to the African Management Development
Institute Network (AMDIN), Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA),
South African Management Development Institute (SAMDI) training of trainers
programme
20 February 2007
The trend spotters suggest that capacity building for better governance and
development effectiveness has come to the top of the global development agenda.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently
found that 'capacity development is one of the most critical issues for both
donors and developing countries'. Similarly, the Africa Commission report
sponsored by the United Kingdom (UK) government devoted a whole chapter to
capacity development and governance. There is increasing agreement within and
outside the multilateral development community that the development of capacity
itself should become the focus of development assistance.
Given these trends it is with great pride, but also keen anticipation that
we enter today into this MoU between JICA and the South African government,
represented here by the Ministry of Public Service and Administration, of which
SAMDI is one component in this portfolio. It means that collectively we have
read the signs of the times correctly. This programme is positioned par
excellence to serve as an important catalyst for the massive capacity building
agenda that lies ahead for African countries and specifically their governments
in the next decade.
We cannot escape the fact that Africa's fait is largely tied up in the
capacity of her institutions to realise her developmental goals. Therefore, the
development and building of capacity is the most important aspect we need to
undertake. Capacity development has many strands. One of these being trained,
the passing on of knowledge and skill, the building of competence in the areas
needed. Pivotal in this respect is the capacity of those who are responsible
for undertaking the training and capacity development. The trainers who find
themselves attached to the public service training institutions that exist
across the continent or the so-called Management Development Institutes (MDIs)
as they are collectively referred to.
Although the main parties to this MoU are JICA and SAMDI, the programme
being given effect to is a flagship programme for the AMDIN. AMDIN is a network
under which all the African MDIs are coming together in order to take advantage
of the collective knowledge and experience across the continent as well as the
economy of scale that can be brought to bear when individual organisations pull
together.
AMDIN was born out of the Windhoek Declaration of the Pan African Ministers
of Public Service in 2001. The declaration highlighted the centrality and
importance of revitalising governance and public administration through
strengthening the capacity of State institutions. The declaration approved a
Pan-African 'Governance and Public Administration' capacity development
programme. The programme serves as a vehicle to mobilise global and continental
partners and facilitate the establishment of the required continental and
regional interventions to support national governance and public administration
improvement efforts, an initiative we can see coming together in a small way
today.
Given the common curriculum and training capacity challenges across many
MDIs, SAMDI was requested by the AMDIN Executive Council (ExCo) to mobilise
funds to kick-start the trainer-to-trainer (ToT) Programme to capacitate
trainers of the African MDIs. This was done after AMDIN members agreed that
there is an opportunity to respond the common capacity challenges confronting
MDIs through a supportive training of trainers programme under the auspices of
AMDIN. Such a programme seeks to respond to the common capacity challenges
confronting MDIs. Within the framework of this commitment, JICA pledged to fund
the AMDIN ToT programme as a way of responding to the overall New Partnership
for Africa's Development (NEPAD) objective of "building the capacity of the
State for development". In keeping with the overall partnership approach, the
programme is formulated as a partnership between JICA and SAMDI on behalf of
AMDIN under the existing framework of JapanâSouth Africa Co-operation Agency
(JSACA).
The current configuration of this programme gives full effect to the
principles of African ownership (AMDIN), using our own expertise where it
exists to share across the continent (SAMDI) but doing so in partnership with
the developed world (Japan) principles that are embraced by NEPAD and the
African Union (AU).
Allow me to say a little bit more about the actual programme we are agreeing
to:
Through this programme we will create a collective of 200 top trainers
spread throughout all the MDIs in Africa. Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone
and Arabic speaking countries will be accommodated under this programme. The
programme is set to take place over a five-year period in which cohorts of 20
trainers will come to South Africa for 10 days of intensive training at a time.
The first of these cohorts are set to arrive during the weekend of 10 and 11
March 2007 and arrangements are well in advance to welcome them in Pretoria and
put them through a course that SAMDI has customised for the needs of a diverse
African group. The participants for the March group will be from Anglophone
countries in eastern, western and southern Africa. We are already thinking on
how to adjust the logistics and content of the course to customise it for
Francophone participants in the third round of training.
These trainers, once through the course, will become the nucleus for AMDIN
to set in motion development processes for curriculum and teaching materials
across a range of areas that will be shared by African MDIs. These areas
include but may not be limited to:
* globalisation and regional integration
* inter and intra-governmental relations
* public policy development and management
* strategic planning and budgeting
* leadership and human resource development;
* public sector restructuring and human resource management;
* public finance, budgeting and financial management;
* ethics and anti-corruption;
* e-Government and knowledge kanagement; and
* public participation and service delivery.
ADMIN will also set in motion processes to network all the trainers that
have gone through this common training programme in order to keep the momentum
going and allowing the knowledge gained to be seeped back into the different
institutions that participants are coming from rather than they benefiting only
in their individual capacities and personalising the experience.
I am truly looking forward to see the rippling effect a programme such as
this could have across the African continent. I would like to thank all the
partners, the Japanese government, JICA, South African government through
SAMDI, National Treasury and my own office, AMDIN and NEPAD. We have come
together thus far put in time and effort to make this signing possible today
and we also did the preparation for the first course that will run in March. I
can just hope that this initiative will go from strength to strength and will
outlive us as individuals who may have been involved this far but that the
fruit of our labour over the past 18 months will be plentiful and widely
dispersed.
I thank you!
Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
20 February 2007
