Opening of the WCO’s 65th Fellowship Programme

04 March 2015

The 65th French-speaking Fellowship Programme was launched in Brussels on Monday 2 March 2015.

This Programme forms part of the work to develop the management capacities of Member administrations in support of Phase II of the Columbus Programme. It is designed to provide extremely promising young managers from Member administrations with training in supervisory and management techniques, so as to help them carry out reform and modernization within their respective administrations in a dynamic and sustainable manner.

This latest Programme brings together 14 participants who were welcomed by Mr. Mikuriya, Secretary General, World Customs Organization. This introduction serves as a prelude to a series of conferences given by WCO experts, as well as to the eight-day Leadership and Management Development Course, facilitated by two experts from Canada and France. The fellows also benefited from a round-table discussion with the Secretary General of the WCO, during their first day at the Secretariat.

The participants will remain at WCO Headquarters until 27 March 2015 in order to prepare an in-depth study on a subject of their choice, under the supervision of a Secretariat tutor, and to make recommendations to their respective administrations for possible subsequent implementation. Lastly the participants will spend a fortnight in one of the Programme’s partner Administrations (France, Switzerland, the Republic of Korea or Japan) to round off their study trip.

The French-speaking Fellowship Programme is funded by the Customs Administrations of Japan, France, Switzerland and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of the Republic of Korea. The countries participating in the 65th Fellowship Programme are as follows: Argentina, Armenia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Comoros, Egypt, Haiti, Madagascar, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.

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