As part of its support to enable regional structures, especially Regional Office of Capacity Buildings (ROCBs), to play a pivotal role in the provision of capacity building services to the region they serve, a WCO team conducted a Capacity Building mission in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 21 to 24 October 2019 to accompany the ROCB Western and Central Africa (WCA) in its reorganization and restructuration process started in 2018.

In this respect, it is worth recalling that the ROCB WCA started in 2018, with the support of WCO experts, an exercise to overhaul its organization and structure to play a more strategic role at the level of the region. This preliminary exercise and approach were approved by the Customs DGs of the region at the 24th Meeting of Directors General held in Bangui, Central African Republic, on 15 March 2019.

The main objective of this follow-up mission was to finalize all competency-based Human Resources Management (HRM) tools including the Job Catalog, Competency Framework, Competency Dictionary and Competency-based Job Description. Based on a comprehensive job analysis exercise and the services mandates in the ROCB, the WCO team together with the HRM Working group defined 22 work positions according to 3 functional areas: management, support and operation. They also identified and defined 80 competencies divided into 3 professional families, namely Operational Competencies, Support Competencies, and Managerial and Behavioral Competencies.

The final documents will be presented at the 25th Meeting of Directors General in Cotonou, Benin, for endorsement and nomination of candidates to work as a Technical Attaché according to the job requirements. 

The WCO will continue to provide assistance and support to the ROCB WCA team in the implementation of a comprehensive competency-based HRM system.  For more information on the WCO HRM/HRD Programme, please contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org.