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A successful 1st Pan African Competitiveness Forum in Addis Ababa

The Ist Pan African Competitiveness Forum (PACF) has successfully launched a new continent-wide competence and action centre for an innovation and cluster based competitiveness approach to national and regional economic development.

The Forum was organized and hosted by African Union (AU) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) in collaboration with The Competitiveness Institute (TCI).

With 150 particpants from 20 African and 9 overseas countries, the Forum marked the beginning of learning and experience sharing on competitiveness approaches across Africa.

Applauding the initiative, the participants raised expectations that PACF will provide support to respond more effectively to the unique challenges and opportunities that Africa faces in global competition.

In particular PACF will enable African stakeholders to more effectively address competitiveness, productivity upgrading and value addition.

The Forum established the bold goal of establishing 1,000 clustering initiatives across Africa by 2010.

We are working on the final report for the conference, but you can already find the draft here .

The results and reports from the breakout sessions in Addis have been also captured. For more details, download the presentation .

One of the participants - Erica Elk from the Western Cape Craft Initiative - has written up her impressions of the Forum in their last newsletter and we invite you to have a look at the article.

Some of the presentations during the conference can be downloaded directly here:

Conference Programme

West Africa Initiatives
East Africa Initiatives
North Africa Initiatives
South Africa Initiatives

Teshome Kebede, Ethiopian Experiences
Nigel Gwynne Evans, South African Experience
Bob Breault, International Optics cluster experience
Anna Stancher, UNIDO cluster development program
Senateur Pierre Laffite
Thomas Kjellvist, Sida
Thomas Winter, Case Studies
Juanma Esteban, TCI