The UNCTAD Course on Key Issues on the International Agenda and the Vi are organizing short courses on trade issues for delegates working at Geneva-based Permanent Missions.
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By Jane Imai
On March 8th and 9th, 2007, fifty students gathered from various Canadian universities to participate in the first ever Ottawa Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.
This simulation, which recreated a Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), encouraged students to engage in dialogue over the principal issues surrounding the Doha Development Round while providing them with a better understanding of the multilateral negotiation process.
Seven Vi member universities have made 10 proposals for the localization of training materials. Most proposals are for the localization of the investment and commodities material, with the exception of Colombia's, which also proposes material on negotiations.
Several universities have already expressed interest in localizing other material when it becomes available, notably Tanzania (Regional Trade Agreements) and Ukraine (Transfer of Technology, Trade Data Analysis).
Vi member Francis Matambalya from the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania contributed to a number of the training sessions of the UNCTAD Course on Key Issues on the International Economic Agenda held in Cairo, Egypt, in February.
Professor Matambalya intervened in modules dealing with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), investment and enterprise, and trade and development. He was also able to attend the entire three-week course, containing six modules.
Convinced that building capacities for trade would increase the competitiveness of developing country enterprises, member states at the meeting of the Commission on Enterprise, Business Facilitation and Development last month asked for the continuation and strengthening of activities of the UNCTAD Virtual Institute and other UNCTAD capacity building programmes.
Thanks to the Vi, our academic cooperation with China, which would probably have been non-existent, is now expanding.
