ABOUT US

The African Training and Research Center in Administration for Development (CAFRAD) is a Pan African intergovernmental organization, established in 1964 by African governments, with the support of UNESCO; making it the first uniquely Pan-African training and research center in the continent for the improvement of public administration and governance systems in Africa. Its headquarters is located in Tangier (Morocco). Membership to CAFRAD is open to all African States. At present, CAFRAD has 36 member states.

Between the mid 1960s and 1970s, various national schools and institutes of public administration as well as staff colleges were created to train civil servants in different fields. However, African states have found that in order to develop top administrators, it was necessary to supplement such facilities that already exist with regional centers. To fill this gap and to advance the professionalization of public administration in Africa, the African Training and Research Center in Administration for Development (CAFRAD) was set up.

A guiding principle in the performance of this function, however, was that CAFRAD’s activities should support rather than replace services in the field offered or capable of being offered by national institutes. More importantly, the reason of creating CAFRAD, as recognized by its founding fathers and confirmed by subsequent experiences, was the very preponderance of French-and British-inspired administrative systems in the African region presented both a challenge and a potential training and research resource which a regional centre such as CAFRAD could exploit in the service of more informed and, therefore, more effective public administration in the countries of the region, regardless of the administrative tradition. Whereas similar problems have been met with similar institutional responses across the anglophone-francophone line, the view and the experience have been that there is something to be said for creating a forum in which francophones, anglophones, lusophones and gramophones could compare notes on the achievements and difficulties, taking into account all other relevant but not necessarily similar factors. CAFRAD’s overall objective is to provide such a forum where senior administrators from all traditions could come to compare one another’s experiences and draw their own conclusions about what can or ought to be done differently in their own systems and approaches, whenever these have seemed necessary, possible or desirable.