ASCON seeks management development institutions cooperation in West Africa

The Director General, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Cecilia Gayya has called for collaboration between the West African Management Development and Training Institutions (WAMDEVIN) in the sub-region.She said such collaboration would boost economic growth in the region.

Speaking in Topo, Badagry at the institute’s opening of a two-week train-the-trainers course organised by WAMDEVIN, Gayya said there should be more collaboration, cooperation and partnership among the Management Development Institutions (MDIs) for each member institute to derive the benefit of networking.

“The MDIs have a responsibility for quality assurance in human capacity building through training, research and consultancy in various countries. We owe West African governments this much and we need to work collaboratively with one another in order to effectively perform our duties to governments and citizens across the region”, she said

Executive Secretary, WAMDEVIN, Kolawole Olowe noted that MDIs are central to every nation that has the hope of using capability development strategies to transform the instruments of the state into effective, efficient, innovative and responsive agents for economic and social transformation.

“The Train-the-trainers course is therefore organised to broaden the horizon of those who are engaged in the business of strengthening the human and institutional capacities of government of their countries and to also familiarise them with current trends in management training”, he said

Olowe explained that WAMDEVIN in its bid to stimulate private and public sector institutions’ investment in capacity building, human resources development and management research, encourages good corporate governance practice.He said since Nigerian government lobbied and relocate WAMDEVIN from its former secretariat in Ghana to Nigeria in 1990, though it took responsibility of funding and running the network, but over the year, the network had suffered donor fatigue and allocation from the Nigerian government has also dwindled, which had drastically affected the operations of the network.

WAMDEVIN is a sub-regional network of management development institutes and business schools whose interests are human resource building, management consultancy, research and publications in Anglophone countries in West Africa with secretariat in ASCON, Topo Badagry. Member-countries include Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia and Cameroun.