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Civil servants trained at last

 Acting executive director of the Namibia Institute of Public Management, Elsi Nghikembua.The Namibia Institute of Public Administration says it has achieved many of its initial goals in the short year that it has been in existence.The acting executive director, Elsie Nghikembua, looks back at the eventful year: “Since the official launch of NIPAM in February last year, the NIPAM strategic plan was developed and approved by the NIPAM Governing Council and the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, an annual implementation plan was compiled and complemented by a working budget.
To guarantee the standard of training, a Training and Development Board, which oversees and ensures quality control of all capacity building interventions, as well as accreditation, has been constituted. Several Memoranda of Understanding were entered into with highly reputable international partners. On that basis, capacity building programmes were custom-made, grounded in local reality and based on best practise.
NIPAM trainers are working hand-in hand with international experts over a three-year period, fine tuning and presenting the courses, and will take over the programmes after this initial capacity building period.
“In addition to ensuring all the formalities and governance issues are in place, we also managed to offer a number of really substantial courses, making our initial training bouquet attractive and relevant to the needs identified during a previous training needs analysis in government,” says Nghikembua.
NIPAM concentrates on capacity building in the public sector. Agreements with such credible institutions as the University of Stellenbosch, CIEDEL from France, the Kennedy Harvard School of Government, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, enables the public service trainer to offer courses for executive, senior and middle management which, to date, have not been accessible to the average government employee.
An MoU was entered into with the University of Stellenbosch – School of Public Leadership to offer a senior management training programme to a maximum of 130 students per year, for a period of three years. At the same time NIPAM trainers will undergo capacity building to be able to present the course in-house when the agreement lapses.The aim of the Senior Development Programme is to provide high level cognitive, emotive, attitudinal, and strategic impact on the personal and professional development of senior managers in the public service.
The NIPAM campus is situated in Olympia and was formally inaugurated by President Hifikepunye Pohamba during February 2011.

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