Meeting of Africa Regional Development Cooperation Officers... Exploring Directions for ODA and Development Cooperation

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] On the 15th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the '2020 Africa Regional Development Cooperation Officers Meeting' via video conference, focusing on the development direction of Africa development cooperation.

This meeting was held to explore stable management measures for our Official Development Assistance (ODA) projects and future directions for Africa development cooperation in the era of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters and development cooperation officers at embassies in 18 Sub-Saharan African countries.

Jo Young-moo, Director of the Development Cooperation Bureau, emphasized the necessity of establishing strategies based on our foreign policy to enhance the outcomes of development cooperation with African countries amid changing domestic and international environments, and urged development cooperation officers at overseas missions to play a central role on the ground.

Following this, Ko Young-geol, Director of the Development Cooperation Division, explained the current status and challenges of our support to Africa, and requested active efforts to strengthen the ODA consultative body between overseas missions and local ODA offices, enhance policy consultations with recipient coordinating agencies and donor consultative bodies at overseas missions, and promote the achievements of ODA projects.

The development cooperation officers agreed that overseas missions should play a more proactive role to alleviate fragmentation of grant aid and improve project effectiveness, while raising the need to expand specialized development cooperation personnel due to the recent increase in workload related to development cooperation at overseas missions. Additionally, the development cooperation officers requested information sharing and provision of work manuals for effective task execution, and asked for the headquarters' attention and support to ensure that some countries are not excluded from aid.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained, "We plan to continue strengthening communication between headquarters and the field, and actively reflect the voices from the field in our development cooperation policies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.