The Nucleus of our Journey is Capacity Building.

Says Hon. Philip Tetema Tondoneh, Deputy Minister of Public Administration and Political Affairs

By Sheku Sackoh Turay

The Ministry of Public Administration and Political Affairs (MoPAPA) held a successful capacity building meeting with a team from the Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI) at the Conference room of the Ministry on Monday 23rd March, 2026.

The Minister commenced by referencing the 1986 International Monetary Fund (IMF) involvement when they came with the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) and they condemned the administrative structure of the country. Because there were a high level of corruption, irregular recruitment processes and effectiveness of the establishment of SAP and there comes in the establishment of Agencies and Commissions.

Due to some anomalies within the service in the past and present, the President in his wisdom deemed it necessary to revamp the Civil/Public Service in the country.

“The President said there should be a revamping of the Civil /Public Service and this Ministry that you’re privilege to visit have the mandate to revamp the Civil and Public Service”. Deputy Minister Tetema Stated.

Minister Tetema welcomed the guests and gave a brief of the transformation process of the Ministry and the revamping of the Public Service Architecture in the country. He underscore the essence of capacity building as a key component of the Ministry for all Civil and Public servants which is the cause of the transitioning of the Civil Service Training College (CSTC) to Public Service Academy (PSA).

“The Nucleus of our Journey is Capacity Building”. Deputy Minister Philip stated.

He was enlightening the team from ESAMI about the mandate of MoPAPA in terms of administrative functions, especially recruitment of Public and Civil servants which is done by Public Service Commission (PSC) for grades 7 upwards and the Human Resource Management Office (HRMO) for grade 1 to 6.

He further stated that capacity building is key for the effective and efficient service delivery of the human resource and the presence of ESAMI is timely and an essential partnership for the Ministry.

According to Chengetai Magunje, the Director of Marketing and Business Development of ESAMI, She gave a brief of ESAMI, when it was found, and there Headquarters is in Tanzania. Chengetai narrated that, ESAMI is a Pan African Regional Management Development Centre owned by ten-member governments from the Eastern and Southern African region. These include Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is a service and market-oriented institution offering high-level specialized management training and development programme, consultancy and action-oriented management research services.

“We were found in 1980 during a Ministerial Meeting in Ethiopia, Governments came together and say let’s establish a training institution that will bring together various Public servants from various countries. Ten countries agreed to the idea and decide to form it”. Magunje noted.

The former President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere provided the building for ESAMI to commence operations and that’s how Tanzania became the headquarter of ESAMI.

She further stated that, ESAMI’s targeted populations are governments, regional and international institutions, NGOs, parastatals, private sector and national training institutions in the Eastern and Southern African region.

In May 1997, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) officially designated ESAMI as ‘The African Centre of Excellence in Management Development”