OPENING REMARKS BY PETER NONI, CEO, TIB DEVELOPMENT BANK, AT DAR ES SALAAM TANZANIA, 15^TH FEBRUARY 2016

I am delighted to welcome you all to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to this special training programme on Project Management.

This programme is a collaborative exercise between the Development Finance Resource Centre (the DFRC), a subsidiary institution of SADC, and the cluster of our local development finance institutions (DFIs), namely, TIB Development Bank and National Development Corporation.

I have the pleasure and honor for the initiative of the collaborating partners to convene this programme in Tanzania as this is an important capacity building programme in its own right.  I am also grateful for this opportunity to host it in Tanzania, where we have a need in the critical skills areas that this programme will be covering.

I am aware that we have some delegates from Angola amongst ourselves in attendance of this programme, as well as Tanzania Agriculture Development Bank. This shows the importance and the value of this programme.

The DFRC has been in existence for more than 10 years as the Secretariat of the SADC Network of Development Finance Institutions, providing capacity building, policy research and advisory services to an ever-growing body of development finance institutions and other development stakeholders in the region. In those years, significant strides have been achieved in placing development finance issues firmly on the regional development agenda, emphasizing once again the key catalytic role of development finance in the region. This has included greater cooperation amongst the DFIs in investment, projects and lending as well as benchmarking and sharing of experiences and best practices.

Our emphasis as a network is the need to develop infrastructure and SME activities requires that we ramp up on project management skills.  This will allow the projects to be implemented effectively and timeously and at minimal cost to stakeholders.

The programme being implemented this week respond to these expectations.

I take note that the programme will cover issues such as theory and practice of project management as well as the elements of project management such as modern techniques of project planning and scheduling, project cost estimating and budgeting, resource planning, risk management and quality management.  Other issues to be covered include concepts of project, different project organizational structures, project scheduling, resource allocation, risk analysis, quality assurance and project control techniques.  

These will give practitioners the leeway to plan, execute, monitor and control projects using modern project management techniques with computer applications hence more viable project will be seen.

I therefore once again, welcome all of you to this gathering and verge you to be attentive at all times to learn from each other, share ideas and network.

May I conclude by extending a word of thanks and gratitude to the CEO of the SADC – DFRC and his team for being hard at work in putting this programme together for us.  We are pleased with the enormous strides made by the DFRC and the DFI network in building capacity amongst the DFIs, network and policy research.

We look forward to more programmes in this regard as we seek to provide the regional development finance agenda and the development of the region as a whole.

I wish you all an enjoyable stay, and a productive engagement for the next five days.

I thank you