Home » News » Africa - PACF

Encouraging PACF meeting in Maputo

Taking advantage of the “5th Eastern African Regional Conference on Innovation Systems and Innovative Clusters in Africa” celebrated in Maputo, Mozambique on August 25-27th and building on the momentum created in Addis Ababa - the 1st Pan African Competitiveness Forum (PACF) - the PACF Executive and Advisory Boards held their second Advisory Board Meetings on August 28-29.

PACF Meeting in Maputo

The Honourable Minister of Science and Technology of Mozambique, Prof. Venancio Massingue, opened the conference congratulating and encouraging the efforts undertaken by the Boards and members of the Pan African Competitiveness Forum and pointed out his very own positive experience the importance of a well interacting Triple Helix and the impact that even small initiatives can make.

TCI President Juan Manuel Esteban reiterated his full support for the PACF activities, and expressed his wish of a fruitful and faithful cooperation between TCI and PACF for the future.

Ayoup Elrashdi from the African Union and member of the Executive Board also reiterated his support to the activities of PACF and pointed out that there is some real need to recognize the existing lack of quality, infrastructure and services in Africa. The African Union wants to attack these problems by establishing the necessary conditions, fostering sustainable economic and social development and promoting cooperation. Part of the strategies will be to commission joint analytical studies, to promote mainstreaming of clusters at national level, to foster joint cluster based competitiveness programmes and to mobilize funds by pooling resources. As PACF evolves it can have strong impact and facilitate the learning and sharing among the stakeholders and help to gain insights.

Prof. Burton Mwamila, the Chairman of the Executive Board reported on the activities since the conference in Addis and informed the Board that seed funds had been secured through Sida/Sarec to establish a lean PACF Secretariat. He presented a draft instrument, structure and workplan, which included the institutionalization of PACF, fund raising and the 1000 Fires competition, which then was further discussed and adopted by the members of the Advisory Board (from now on called PACF Council).
A part from the Council and Executive Board, there are going to be five regional PACF Chapters and National Steering Committees to organize and coordinate the regional and national activities respectively.
It was decided that the new vision of PACF should be: "To be the leader in promoting competitiveness and socio-economic development in Africa through innovation and cluster based initiatives"


One of the main goals of PACF is to "light 1000 Cluster Fires across Africa by 2010" and further on to organize a series of competitions among these 1000 cluster fires. To finance activities to achieve this goal a major point on the agenda for PACF will have to be fundraising and therefore the Chairman of the PACF Council Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe appointed Lars Eklund to be the Special Ambassador of PACF for Fundraising.

Among others it is planned to organize at least two regional conferences to create awareness about the 1000 African Cluster Fires in the first quarter of 2009 (confirmed for the PACF-ECOWAS chapter and the Eastern Africa chapter).

Thomas Winther was nominated the PACF Ambassador for Climate Innovation and will represent PACF at the Seminar on Climate Innovation in October this year.

Chairman Barnabas Nawangwe closed the meeting by inviting all Board and PACF members to participate in the next meeting in Cape Town which will be organized alongside the TCI Annual Conference in October this year.