The second Overseas Small Business Conference by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), held in Frankfurt in March 2020, provided a strong forum for fruitful engagement between USAID and 200 participants. The majority of attendees came from the Offices of Acquisition and Assistance in Washington, Missions of Europe & Eurasia, Middle East and Africa, the current USAID large business prime contractors, and other development cooperation organisations like GOPA.
This two-day conference was organised by USAID’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) in collaboration with the USAID Office in Frankfurt (M/OSO) and the USAID Ukraine Mission. Participants were given an effective forum to engage with USAID concerning effective collaborating and procurement reforms, include their New Partners Initiative, the USAID business forecast, and subcontracting opportunities with large prime contractors.
GOPA hosted and managed a booth table at the conferen…
This February, we are especially pleased to kick-off our third active project in Rwanda. We have started implementing the GIZ-funded project “Decentralisation and Good Governance” in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The programme aims to strengthen local governance in the contexts of sector decentralisation, locally generated and managed resources, and increased accountability to citizens.
GOPA has a team of three international and two national experts who are based within three main institutions: the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Local Governance and the Rwandan Revenue Authority. In close cooperation with the local GIZ DGG team, they deliver a hands-on approach for strengthening local governance.
Following a successful second phase, the project has now reached its third phase, and is expected to achieve its goals by October 2021. The current phase focuses on Public Finance Management (PFM); an area of research in which our colleague, Christelle Weckend, has conducted several st…
At the end of January 2020, we started the GIZ-funded “Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation Project” in Tunis.
This two-year project is being carried out within the framework of the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, a public-private partnership giving support to countries in implementing the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement. In line with the overall approach of the Global Alliance, the two long-term experts on the ground will bring together German, European and Tunisian companies, as well as the Tunisian Government, as equal partners. They will identify opportunities to address delays and unnecessary “red tape” in cross-border trade – and design and deploy targeted reforms in the area of customs and logistics that deliver commercially quantifiable results.
The project is part of the GIZ module on job partnerships and promotion of medium-sized enterprises in Tunisia, a programme under BMZ’s Special Initiative for Training and Job Creation.
The Global Alliance includes: …
This January, we held a high-level workshop to kick-off the project “Support to the MCA-Morocco Agency in the management, monitoring, technical assistance and closure of the activities of the Charaka Fund MCA-Morocco Agency".
The Charaka Fund – meaning partnership in Arabic – is a grant of 100 million USD from the American Government, with an additional 30 million USD from the Moroccan Government. The funds are used to create and renovate 15 beneficiary VET centres educating around 8,400 interns annually in the fields of agriculture, agro-industry, tourism, industry, handcrafts, construction, transport, logistic and health.
The formal kick-off event received high media attention, and was attended by high-ranking government officials, and representatives of the 15 VET centres. The workshop gathered together all stakeholders around the table, where we presented our management approach, systems and tools to ensure the effective management, monitoring and evaluation of the entir…
The GIZ-funded programme “Economic inclusion of refugees and host communities in Rwanda” has been running since September 2018, and GOPA became involved in October 2019.
The project’s objective is to improve the economic participation of refugees and residents of the host communities. This is to be done by a combination of the following measures: strengthening the framework conditions at national and local level; promoting the local economy; setting up small enterprises; expanding entrepreneurial activities; and providing vocational training. The main project counterparts are the Ministry in Charge of Emergency Management, and UNHCR.
We have a team of four long-term staff in Kigali, and our activities are delivered in two main components. We support the professional development of young refugees, and the youth from neighbouring communities, by means of short vocational courses, including internships. Moreover, we provide entrepreneurship training to support bu…
