| Overview : The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Office in South Africa and the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) have been collaborating to establish a Centre on Trade and Regional Industrialisation (CTRI). The Centre is intended to build the capacity of Africa’s trade negotiators in the ongoing TFTA and CFTA regional integration negotiations as well as to strengthen trade facilitation mechanisms in the region. Specifically, the Centre’s main role would be to facilitate the implementation of the “development integration” approach to regional integration. This implies ensuring that the TFTA and CFTA usher in and drive a process that leads to both the development of productive capacity and cross-border infrastructure. Evidence suggests that for regional integration to be sustainable all its members must benefit, especially, the lesser developed, small, vulnerable, and land-locked countries. The CTRI’s work will be located within the UNDP South African work areas of “promoting inclusive growth” and “fostering South Africa’s regional and global role”. The Centre will advance the developmental regionalism approach to trade and integration in Southern Africa, which is grounded on three principles: (i) increasing trade liberalization by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers among African countries; (ii) building regional value chains in productive sectors that increase their share of value-added and gains from trade through increased beneficiation and industrial development; and (iii) cooperating with each other in building cross-border regional infrastructure projects, across a wide field, including transport, energy, communications, and tourism. UNDP is therefore seeking service of a consultant to provide overall programme, intellectual and strategic leadership to the Centre. The Director will report directly to the Project Board as well as the Project Management Team in UNDP. |
