Meeting to identify the research and training needs of Africa region trade policy makers and negotiators.

PORT LOUIS, 10 October 2001

This was the third and final regional meeting in a broad networking effort aimed at strengthening the capacity of developing countries to participate more effectively in multilateral trade negotiations. Previous meetings were held in New Delhi for Asia, in November 2000 and Santiago de Chile for Latin America, in November 1999.

The meeting was attended by the main training and research institutions in the African region, as well as existing academic networks involved in international trade issues, and all regional and sub-regional UN secretariats.

The Dean of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), who co-ordinated and hosted the Asian regional meeting, was also invited to present an assessment of the Asian experience in this area.

Participants called for broader knowledge networks to include research institutions, NGOs, parliamentarians and the private sector, with core institutions assigned in each region and training networks extending across regions.

Joint initiatives similar to one between the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and the Universities of Mauritius and Dar-es-Salaam to run postgraduate courses in commercial diplomacy and international business, will go some way towards providing countries with expertise in training trade negotiators and trade promoters.

This builds on the conclusions of the New Delhi Workshop for Asia, which highlighted the insufficient expertise in the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement, the need to adapt national legal systems and policies to conform to multilateral trade disciplines, and the lack of information on new market access opportunities among trade operators.

Furthermore, there is a need to carry out more cost-benefit research on the impact of the Uruguay Round, and more efforts are needed to support Governments that are negotiating their accession to the WTO.

It was hoped that research and training programmes for trade-related capacity building should eventually be self-sustaining with any external support, such as could be provided by UNCTAD, to be purely transitional.

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© United Nations 2001