Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

JICA-Net Seminars in French

Francophone Africa tunes into KAIZEN, One Village One Product via GDLN

Francophone countries in Africa have now begun receiving JICA-Net seminars in French via the GDLN. The inaugural sessions conducted in October 2007 both focused on principles that Japan has become famous for - the first on “KAIZEN – Small steps to Improve Productivity”, given to GDLN Centers in Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal and Mauritania on October 2, and the second on “One Village One Product in Japan” on October 9, connecting to Benin, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

The TDLC first began disseminating JICA-Net seminars to Asia following the November 2004 cooperation agreement between the two development learning networks – GDLN and JICA-Net. Beginning in October 2005, the seminars were also delivered to GDLN Centers in Anglophone Africa: to date, a total of 28 seminars have been delivered in English to GDLN Centers in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana and Uganda amounting to 80 sessions. In three years, a total of 37 seminars have been delivered to Asia and Africa combined, numbering 126 sessions in total.

Meanwhile, there was a demand for the seminars in Francophone countries as well – Mauritania, for instance, hired an English- French simultaneous interpreter to receive a seminar in 2006.

Following up on this need, JICA-Net and the TDLC discussed details to bring the seminars to Africa in French. Fortunately, JICA-Net was also looking to expand its outreach to French as well as Spanish speaking countries.

Overall, feedback received from Managers at participating GDLN Centers has been positive. Based on a survey conducted after the sessions, the contents and marketing value of the JICA-Net seminars received high marks, while numerous requests were made for simultaneous interpretation. The first two sessions were delivered with consecutive translation from English to French.