Professor Sheikh A Abdullah, chairperson of AMDIN As the dust is settling after the recent Group of 20 meeting in London, the question in the AMDIN network is how will our MDIs in Africa be affected by the global economic crisis - and how can we assist our governments to analyse the situation and point to possible innovative solutions that will suit our respective countries and regions?

There is no debate anymore: Africa will be affected, and these will be with us over the long term. Economists estimate that this financial crisis may set the continent back as much as 10 years in terms of our own economic development. The United Nations (UN) has already flagged one threat: that developing countries will now miss the deadline for meeting the Millennium Development Goals completely, and the poor will again suffer most. This is particularly cruel, since this crisis was created by the rich, in countries that have deified unbridled capitalism.

Swine flu will also have economic implications for Africa. This virus is making exceptional demands on governments and public servants in every affected country. Should the virus spread to Africa, the impact will be enormous, especially as the health of so many Africans is already compromised by tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, and poor nutrition due to poverty. This again underlines the critical importance for capacity development of African bureaucracies to receive urgent attention - in spite of the stretch on already tight financial resources. This outbreak brings home the truth that our role in the public sector is to serve our people and usher them into a better future - especially in times of crisis.

Many of us are starting to feel the pinch in terms of finances available to run and expand our institutions. Our respective treasuries or boards of directors are likely to have signalled belt-tightening measures. As has happened in the past, training budgets are prone to be early targets for cost cutting. Obviously such a measure would be extremely short-sighted, since never before has it been so important to have the best public sector workforce conceivable.

Indeed, it has been only recently that we started to feel Africa's intellectual capital was starting to receive its rightful recognition, alongside financial capital. Human resource development and management considerations were taking their first steps to the centre stage of public administration, no longer relegated to the wings. What a tragedy if this development was halted in this beginning stage.

The Economist recently declared 2009 the year of the chief financial officer (CFO). It predicts the implications of the CFO's ascendancy will be severe and long lasting, "affecting how organisations will be managed, what it feels like to work in them, the culture and even its language". And it predicts that the biggest loser in the struggle for organisational power will be the human resource director.

AMDIN, together with our colleagues in the African Public Sector - Human Resource Managers Network (APS-HRMnet), will have to struggle longer and harder for the recognition of the importance of people, talent and capacity development, including training and skills development.

The World Bank, in its Global Economic Prospects for 2009, adjusted downwards all growth projections made late last year. With respect to sub-Saharan Africa, it now expects GDP growth in 2009 to halve from 4.9 percent in 2008 to 2.4 percent - 1.8 points below earlier projections. Growth of oil exporters is now expected to reach 2.9 percent, down from projections of 4.5 percent.

Nigerian President Yar'Adua captured many of our sympathies when he said: "I want to say that the crisis is not a joke. It is real and demands critical measures to mitigate the effect of the crisis on our people. We have to ensure it does not degenerate into hardship for our people. We must come out stronger than we have gone into it."

Just as the private enterprise has turned to the state for financial bailouts and intervention, now our citizens will turn to the state for a socioeconomic safety net to provide security in challenging times.

However, they are turning to a state that has been hollowed out over the past few decades. A state that has lost many of its capabilities to directly provide public services or step in where the market has failed, and has been denuded of its once powerful regulatory capability.

No matter how tempting, going back to the administrative dispensations of the 1950s and 1960s - where the government and ruling party embraced an all-encompassing role in central planning as well as in public services provision, as in the socialist systems of the past - is not an option. We will have to put together our collective heads to think what is suitable for our countries and our continent under the prevailing circumstances.

In this I want to challenge our MDIs to pool our strengths and formulate creative suggestions. We need to bury the weakness associated with liberal public sector reform models that were forced on us through structural adjustment programmes. This is an opportunity to use the intellectual space created by this crisis to advance African solutions for Africa. We need to systematically build the capacity to make our own models work. This is what we had in mind when we came together to create AMDIN early in this millennium.

AMDIN helps member institutes and associates improve the capacity and performance of the public sector across Africa, part by providing a platform for exchanging knowledge. We are an open forum where you can present your problems and difficulties, discuss them with your peers and other experts in the field, and create solutions that are based on the needs of African communities and governments. We offer opportunities for you to present your own findings, to blaze new trails into public service and management development.

Last year we listened to what you asked us to do. This year we respond by creating additional communication channels for exchanging knowledge and opinion. With the launch of AMDIN Connect and our new website (www.amdin.net), which is now up and running, we offer you a way to connect with others in our profession across Africa, share what you are doing and reflect on your experiences.

This is not the secretariat's newsletter or the EXCO's. It is your newsletter, your webpage. We count on you not only to read what others have to say, but to send us your news, views, questions, challenges, recommendations, resources and solutions.

I have tabled the topic of the economic crisis and given you a glimpse of my thoughts. The debate is much larger and multidimensional. You might have a different perspective or want to bring forward an aspect I have not even touched on. I invite you to share your thoughts with your peers in AMDIN. Please write to us at our email address: secretariat@amdin.net

We welcome you as part of the connected!

In the first week of February we welcomed the EXCO and the Programmes Committee meeting at PALAMA (Public Administration, Leadership and Management Academy) in Pretoria. The EXCO considered a host of internal policy documents as foundations for AMDIN to put in place governance arrangement we will all be proud of. Our new Operations Manager, Mrs Ingrid du Toit, had a big hand in preparing these, as well as orchestrating our recent office move.

I was offered the CEO position after the July 2008 Council meeting, and started working full time for AMDIN this month, bringing the staff component now to two full time officials.

We anticipate that 2009 will be financially tight, since fundraising cycles are long and funds do not start flowing immediately. The EXCO therefore agreed on a carefully prioritised programme of action for this year, emphasising the Second AMDIN biennial conference (please dairise 5 - 7 October 2009) and running the fourth cohort of Training of Trainers under the JICA-PALAMA memorandum of understanding.

We agreed to concentrate on putting in place the communications channels for knowledge exchange, sharing and learning. This newsletter, AMDIN Connect, is an important element of our communication strategy.

Both the newsletter and the webpage will rely on your input, feedback and suggestions. We are deliberately trying to stimulate discussion, especially through our newsletter. Those of you who are bloggers, wiki fundis, interactive online facilitators and the like - please make yourselves known to us!

The All Africa Conference of Ministers of Public/Civil Service last year tasked AMDIN with putting in place a network of information collaborators in the various MDIs who can supply African decision-makers at short notice with quantitative and qualitative information regarding public sector-related variables and indicators across the continent. We would like you to consider who in your organisation is ideally placed to be delegated such a role and send us their contact details.

Your active involvement will ensure that AMDIN serves your MDIs interests, representing and meeting your needs. We look forward to serving you.

Each year on 23 June, we celebrate Africa Public Service Day to encourage governments and public sector organisations to focus on pressing issues by identifying a theme and some subthemes. For 2009 the theme is: Delivery of Quality Service for Sustainable Development.

This theme includes subthemes such as:

• Citizen focused administration
• Involvement of non-state actors in public administration and service delivery
• Innovation in service delivery
• Enhancing service delivery through ICT

AMDIN is encouraging our MDIs across the continent to do their part in celebrating this important day and picking up on the identified theme.

Please inform us of your planned events. We will publish them on the AMDIN website as well as the UNPAN site. After the events, please send us a short article with photographs that we can share in AMDIN Connect and the website.

For this to happen, PALAMA, with the help of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) arranged for two highly experienced trainers from the Canada School of Government, Celiné Larabie and Marie Claire Charrette, to lead the training. Danielle Larue, CEO of the Seychelles Institute of Management and AMDIN Council member, supplemented the Canadian team by strengthening the African angle in the course content, and introduced AMDIN to the participants.

This course was a truly multi-agency collaboration, with strong partnerships formed. It was the first time that AMDIN could use the new PALAMA training facility for this event, rather than hotel meeting rooms as in the past.

Participants appreciated the highly interactive nature of the course and the way it was presented. The evaluations pointed repeatedly to the relevance and the appropriate timing for this capacity development exposure, but participants complained of having had too little time to explore Pretoria and surrounding areas.

Speaking at the closing event on behalf of the participants, Mr Thomas Ebongué Nemy from Cameroon gave the assurance that the effect of what was learnt will be proven over time.

It was most fortuitous that the AMDIN EXCO was meeting in the same building at the time, permitting contact between the AMDIN leadership and course participants.

The Conference of African Ministers of Public Service and Administration took a great interest in this development. The chairperson of the conference, Kenya's Minister of State for Public Service, the Hon. Dalmas Otieno and some of his East African counterparts were present.

The overall objective of the APS-HRMnet is to provide human resource managers in the African public sector with a networking platform for advocacy, human resources management professional development, information and knowledge sharing. AMDIN was recognised as a key stakeholder in the process of bringing about this new network.

In a paper presented on behalf of the AMDIN chair, Professor Sheikh Abdullah, it was observed that: “Human resource managers and development practitioners in the public sector have been too far removed from the strategic centre to make an easy connect between the human resource processes and that of the strategic and policy activity of our respective governments.”

AMDIN regards the establishment of this new network as a very positive development. The strengthening of strategic HR capacity in ministries and departments will provide MDIs with empowered partners in "client" departments, assisting with more appropriate targeting of their HRD activities. The two networks together could be in a position to tackle effectively the standing of human resource management and development on the continent.

The African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya has assumed the responsibility to host the APS-HRMnet for now.

1. Heads of Institutions Forum 2009 (3-4 October 2009) Standards of excellence for African MDIs
   

   AMDIN provides the platform for Senior Institutional Leaders to exchange knowledge and engage in peer learning through an annual forum that is exclusively dedicated to this important audience. This year we will open up the discussion among Heads of MDIs regarding the proposed Standards of Excellence prepared by UNDESA and IASIA, finding a way to adapt these to be suitable for the conditions under which MDIs are operating. Accordingly, the theme of the 2009 Forum is: Standards of excellence for African MDIs.

2. Biennial MDI Dialogue: (5-7 October 2009): Integrating M&E systems into performance management: The contribution of MDIs
   

   Every two years AMDIN creates the opportunity for dialogue between the African MDI community; the public sector/ administration policy community; and public management practitioners on a topic that affects the overall functioning of the entire system. This process improves the flow of information and develops greater understanding of the needs and challenges of the different players, and extends the MDI network of contacts to other stakeholder groups as well. The challenge of improving public sector performance is high on the agenda. AMDIN believes one of the weaknesses is that different systems that could contribute to performance enhancement are not necessarily aligned, e.g. Monitoring and Evaluation systems; performance management and implementation of professional codes of conduct are all treated as separate and unrelated initiatives. The quest would be to explore what MDIs can do to bring about greater synergy between these disparate sets of initiatives, all aimed at allowing us to perform better.
   Therefore, the theme: Integrating M&E systems into performance management: The contribution of MDIs.

   Activities on the margins of the dialogue are:

   • The Biennial meeting of the General Assembly
   • Skills development activities (ICT related)
   • Heads of Institutions Forum
     
     
3. JICA-PALAMA-AMDIN Training of Trainers Programme: Cohort 4 (French Speaking) (25 participants) (12-23 October 2009, Pretoria, South Africa)
   

   This programme is in its fourth year of implementation. Depending on the exchange rate, a group of 20 - 28 is trained annually to a curriculum developed and quality controlled by PALAMA. The course is designed to strengthen facilitation skills and sharing an outcomes-based education/ training approach.

4. Instructional design and materials development experts: designing and piloting an intervention to build professional capacity
   

   This is a new initiative, aiming to provide an important building block in the development of Africa specific material. It could provide a group of instructional designers and materials developers with a shared perspective to build leadership in the development of generic curriculum supported by facilitation notes and teaching material, adaptable for national and sub-regional contexts. This programme will result in a pool of expertise that can be used to write up various Africa specific case studies/ simulations, such as those deriving from awards programmes. The immediate emphasis will be on developing an appropriate curriculum, learning materials/ processes and determining the model for delivery, as well as piloting this intervention.

5. Develop and operationalise the AMDIN website and regularly publish the newsletter
   

   These will constitute necessary vehicles for knowledge sharing and collaboration, approaches which underpins much of AMDIN's work including the maintenance of various databases; facilitating online Peer to Peer learning and Communities of Practice; information sharing re opportunities; tools, resources and so forth.

6. Meet all the necessary internal capacity building objectives to ensure survival and growth of AMDIN:
   

   In early stages of organisational existence, this is disproportionately important for the development of the organisation itself. Special emphasis will be placed on resource mobilisation; operationalising systems and procedures for financial and administrative accountability, addressing capacity challenges with respect to multilingual operations and meeting all statutory requirements.