Over the past years, the Niger Customs Administration has been fully committed to wide-ranging reform and modernization to successfully implement trade facilitation agreement measures. Since then, management has made it a strategic priority to develop staff competencies across the board, both in technical and managerial areas.  As part of this process and thanks to the financial support from the Customs Cooperation Fund of India, a Leadership and Management Development (LMD) Workshop was successfully organized by the World Customs Organization (WCO) to the Niger Customs senior executives.  The workshop was held in Niamey from 13 to 24 June and was offered to 20 senior managers including DG, national and regional directors as well as high potential middle managers (four women and sixteen men) representing the operational and central Customs departments.

The workshop’s objective was to equip Niger Customs Administration with a pool of committed and competent leaders able to work as a team. The leaders/managers will be responsible for working with their colleagues to drive the modernization process already underway within the Administration.  With that in mind, the workshop facilitator advocated a practical and varied training approach and held an extracurricular session on the main priorities of the current strategic plan, in order to enable participants to take ownership of the plan and think strategically about its implementation. The workshop allowed participants to work on projects deemed critical and strategic for their Administration, such as preventing corruption through an effective and competency-based staff rotation system, establishing a reputable Customs training institute and implementing the AEO programme. Action plans for the three projects have been developed to conduct monitoring and evaluation activities.

The workshop was also a unique opportunity for all the participants to reflect on themselves through introspection exercises, play roles and dialogues on the situation and challenges of their Administration while presenting the relevant models and theories on modern leadership and management, especially the ‘diamond of leadership’ based on deeper self-awareness – further manage themselves – really understanding others – to have a positive impact.  In addition, participants were also able to perfect their strategic management skills and how to create a vision for the future, deepen their understanding of leadership, people management, different management styles, promoting diversity and integrity in the workplace, interpersonal and strategic communication, negotiation skills, and change management. 

In the closing ceremony, Deputy Director General and participants gave their heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the WCO Secretariat for their unwavering support and asked for such initiatives to be repeated.

For more information on the WCO LMD Programme, please, contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org.