Under the auspices of the WCO/JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Joint Project, six (6) West African Customs administrations, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo, participated in the “Master Trainers Programme (MTP)” and made collective efforts in building a pool of experts on Risk Management and intelligence Analysis (RM&IA) and in developing their regional Risk Management and intelligence Analysis training materials to be used by those trainers for more sustainable capacity building in West Africa on this important and critical core Customs topic.
In order to support the WCO West and Central Africa (WCA) regional strategy on the development of a "regional pool of experts", the MTP took a holistic approach to build more sustainable training capacity in the region through a series of progressive activities organized under the MTP. Those activities included the organization of Working Groups (WGs) for improving the expertise of participants on Risk Management and intelligence Analysis, improving the training skills and competences and developing a regional training materials/programs to be used by the trainers to which the eighteen (18) nominated officials from the six Customs administrations participated in since February 2019 to achieve the objective. On 31 May – 4 June 2021, they got together again virtually at its final 5th Working Group (WG5) with the experts invited from the WCO and Japan Customs. In this WG5, the participants took responsibility to deliver 4-day virtual Risk Management and intelligence Analysis training to test their training skills and expertise as well as the regional training materials they developed in both English and French. All 18 participants demonstrated their outstanding knowledge, expertise, and skills as Risk Management and intelligence Analysis trainers and as a result, have successfully received “Certificate of Achievement” from the WCO.
On the last day of the WG5 an official closing ceremony took place with the presence of Mr. Ricardo Treviño, WCO Deputy Secretary-General, and Ms. Katsura Miyazaki, JICA Director-General for Governance and Peacebuilding Department, as well as Commissioners/Senior representatives from the 6 participating Customs administrations. All parties acknowledged the efforts made during the Master Trainer Programme in West Africa including the time of COVID-19 pandemic. The experts from the WCO, JICA, and Japan Customs congratulated the achievement made by the participants and expressed their strong expectation for the important role to be played by the MTs for the regional development through quality training.
Finally, both WCO and JICA welcomed the strong ownership and commitment clearly demonstrated by the participating countries during the MTP and reaffirmed their support and collaboration to the continuous efforts of Customs administrations in West Africa to ensure sustainable capacity development.
For more information, please, contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.