Under the auspices of the WCO/JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Joint Project, the Second Working Group Activity (sub-regional workshop) of the Master Trainers Programme (MTP) on Post Clearance Audit (PCA) was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 4- 8 March 2019, comprising the same participants from the five countries in East Africa who participated in the first sub-regional workshop held in Tanzania in September of last year.
This workshop is the second in a series of activities to be undertaken by the five revenue countries in East Africa, namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, to enhance their capacity related to the implementation of PCA under their Trade Facilitation and Border Control Project. The Master Trainer Program or MTP is a joint endeavor implemented under the WCO/JICA Joint Project to develop sustainable and self-contained training capacity within the Customs administrations by 1) developing a pool of well-experienced trainers and (2) regionally featured training materials and program to be used by these trainers.
In total, twenty (20) nominated Customs officials got together again in Nairobi this time to continue work towards the ultimate objective of the MTP. While the first activity (WG1) in September focused on the (i) identification of regionally common issues and challenges in PCA and training needs and (ii) improvement of PCA knowledge and expertise, this second activity (WG2) placed more emphasis on the “training skills/knowledge”, i.e. another important skill in becoming a quality trainer. Experts from Ukraine Customs (on behalf of the WCO), East African Community (EAC) Secretariat and Japan Customs shared their knowledge and expertise on PCA and training to improve the understanding of the participants on both theory and practice to achieve the objective.
The participants demonstrated their absolute commitment to the MTP and actively participated in a number of working sessions/group discussions organized throughout the week. Both WCO and JICA welcomed the positivity demonstrated by the participants and their efforts to ensure sustainable capacity development in the Customs Administrations of East Africa.