WINDHOEK – The Namibia Institute of Public Administration and Management (NIPAM) says it is doing a tremendous job in building capacity for public servants and now plans to pilot their training programmes to the regions.

NIPAM provides capacity building to staff at central government level. NIPAM training is aimed at the executive level of government right through to operational staff by offering flagship programmes, as well as generic training and development courses.

It also offers a range of highly specialised courses and programmes to expose office-bearers to new knowledge and skills.
From governance to fraud prevention, NIPAM offers State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) help to manage their responsibilities more effectively and to contribute to making such enterprises more competitive, efficient and transparent.

Elsie Nghikembua, NIPAM acting executive director says it is not fair to expect everyone from the regions to come to Windhoek to attend the training.

“We have a plan for our regional and local training products. We want to move out from the campus to the regions. We have piloted that outreach programme. We have sent our lecturers to the regions for people to attend courses there instead of coming to Windhoek,” she said.

Nghikembua explained that many people understand what NIPAM aims to do and that is why the intake has also increased.

“People are now very interested. In terms of candidacy, NIPAM is not struggling. It started of with a Senior Management Development Programme with a group of about 15 people. But if you look at the second group it has about 50 [people]. People are coming and nobody has dropped out because they now understand and appreciate that when they come here it will have a positive impact in their working environment,” she noted.
Training is conducted over a five-week period but not consecutively.

NIPAM has an intake of 130 senior managers and another 130 middle managers and 26 foundation programmes.
After extensive consultations internally, complemented with facilitated study tours to other countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, NIPAM was finally brought into existence by an Act of Parliament in 2010.