South Sudan’s top civic leaders have spoken about how African Enterprise programs are giving local government badly-needed new management and leadership skills.
As part of its Peace and Reconciliation work in the war-ravaged nation, AE has been running special training programs for senior staff of Juba City Council.
The capital of South Sudan and the country’s biggest city (population 300,000), Juba was hit hardest by the 2015 fighting between government and opposition forces.
Since then, the council has had played a major part in bringing reconciliation between leaders of the warring groups
But apart from the terrible loss of life and destruction, conflict over a number of years has prevented many young South Sudanese from pursuing higher education.
This in turn has left City Council staff and elected council officials lacking fundamental governance, management and leadership skills.
AE has been helping to bridge the gap with special training forums, and AE leaders from Kenya recently visited council offices in to see what progress is being made.
They were shown how the training is giving rise to improved management systems and processes, enabling staff to operate more efficiently and effectively.
Council Speaker Michael Allajabu said the forums have led to significant improvements in reconciliation and peace-building skills and he urged AE to continue its work in the city.
Story written by Mike Heard, AE Volunteer.