Improving negotiating skills of East African public servants

Trainers from public service training institutions in East Africa are being taught how to develop and institutionalise programmes which will improve the negotiating abilities of civil servants.

At the end of a two-week course - running from 15 to 26 March - these 21 trainers will be armed with negotiating techniques and skills they can take back to their respective training institutions, based in seven countries; Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

They will then roll out a series of training programmes based on what they learned, which will help create a critical mass of seasoned and well- trained negotiators throughout East Africa.

“Effective negotiation skills are becoming increasingly important in today’s interdependent world,” said Dunstan Maina, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Governance and Institutional Development Adviser for East Africa. “Having a corps of effective negotiators is an asset to any country on both a national and international level.”

“By focusing on building up the ability of the 21 senior trainers, this area of work will in time have a knock-on effect on hundreds, if not thousands of public servants in the region,” added Mr Maina.

Speaking at the opening of the programme Kenya’s Minister of State for Public Service, Dalmas Otieno, railed against “the culture of poor leadership and performance” which he says has crept into the African Public Service in recent years. He appealed for attitudes in public services to change.

Secretariat Links:

• Public Sector Development
• Country Profile: Kenya