UNITAR and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) successfully conducted session of the first two joint e-Learning courses on “Assessing Regional Integration in Africa: Towards an African Continental Free Trade Area” and on “Economic Report on Africa 2012: Unleashing Africa’s Potential as a Pole of Global Growth” from 17 September to 19 and 26 October 2012, respectively.

A total of 266 African delegates and officials participated in the two courses, which combined self-study, online discussions, and weekly assessments with the aim of providing participants high quality training and networking in a flexible and cost-effective way. Both courses were very well received, with 94% of participants indicating in the course evaluation that they are completely or mostly satisfied by their course, and 91% of participants who said they would recommend their course to a colleague.

Below are comments from two course participants:

“I would like to thank UN ECA and UNITAR for according me an opportunity to participate in this course. It has been very educative and I hope to use the skills I gained in contributing to the development of our continent. “ -- Ms. Dorah Likukela, Republic of South Africa

“To the organizers, thank you very much for the good work in identifying a very relevant topic and for the opportunity. It was well worth every minute and the lesson learnt will be useful for my work.” -- Ms. Jennifer Gache, United Republic of Tanzania

Registration is currently open for the final session this year, which will start on November 19, 2012. Please visit http://www.unitar.org/event/pfat

For additional information about UN ECA please visit http://www.uneca.org/.