Annual General Meeting of the Zambia JICA Fellowship Association (ZAJIFA)
2020/3/4
On February 29th 2020, the Annual General Meeting of the Zambia JICA Fellowship Association (ZAJIFA), which comprises the alumni who completed JICA’s training programmes, took place in Lusaka.
This year, the event was attended by around 70 persons including H.E. Mr. MIZUUCHI Ryuta, Ambassador of Japan to the Republic of Zambia, Mr. Sydney Nalube, Assistant Director of National Science Centre, Ministry of General Education who represented Dr. Jobbicks Kalumba, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of General Education, Mr. TOKUHASHI Kazuhiko, Chief Representative, JICA Zambia office, and Mr. Joseph Mulenga, President of ZAJIFA.
H.E. Mr. MIZUUCHI stated, in his remarks (click here), that while the development cooperation to Zambia since 1968 is a remarkable achievement, we have to ask ourselves whether our cooperation has effectively triggered the transforming of Zambian economy. As the purpose of the cooperation was to help Zambia achieve its sustainable development goals (SDGs), we had to take it seriously so that the cooperation between Japan and Zambia can trigger the Zambian economy transform effectively.
Mr. Mulenga mentioned that Zambia has sent more than 4,000 trainees to Japan through JICA’s training programmes, and hoped that they are activating and motivating such members to work together by utilizing knowledge gained and shared in order to help Zambia achieve Vision 2030 where Zambia aims to become a prosperous middle income country by 2030.
During the meeting, 4 ZAJIFA members made presentations on human resources development and the succession plan in an organization, results of the visit to Japan for deepening the understanding in development cooperation by Japan, the proposed plan for development of floating photovoltaic technology on the Lake Kariba, and solid waste management improvement plan. The attendees asked the presenters a number of questions and they had a vigorous discussion on each presentation. And then, the election of ZAJIFA executives was taken place.