ATPC
holds its first technical committee meeting
By
Andrew Allimadi
The African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today held the first annual meeting of its technical committee in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The main purpose of the meeting is to give ATPC the opportunity to present the broad thematic areas of its recent and planned activities for detailed scrutiny by the committee. The experts on the committee will then make recommendations that will form the basis of ATPC’s work programme for the 2005 – 2006 period. These recommendations will be presented to the ATPC board of governors, who are scheduled to meet on 27 April.
The meeting was opened by Hakim Ben Hammouda, the director of ECA’s Trade and Regional Integration Division, who welcomed all participants to ECA on behalf of K.Y. Amoako, the Executive Secretary of ECA. Mr. Ben Hammouda noted that cooperation between ECA and the various experts and institutions represented on the committee was not new. However, the committee would make this cooperation more formal and help ensure that the goal of increasing Africa’s participation in international trade would be realized.
Background
ECA established the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) in June 2003 with the assistance of a grant from the Government of Canada through its Canada Fund for Africa.
The broad objective of ATPC is to strengthen the capacity of African governments to formulate, analyze and implement sound trade policies and programmes; and to participate more effectively in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations with the active involvement of the private sector and civil society. The Centre’s activities cover five key areas: development of trade research, training and information dissemination capacity of the Centre; mainstreaming trade in national development policies and programmes; promoting intra-African trade; providing trade-related advisory services and technical assistance; and building an African consensus on trade issues.
The primary role of the technical committee is to identify activities for ATPC and to provide intellectual and technical programme guidance. The technical committee of ATPC currently has 12 members made up of academics, representatives of African countries, regional economic communities, civil society groups and the Canadian government.