IAF Africa Region Updates - December 2018

It has been a busy few months in the Africa region with several significant achievements

The Africa Facilitation Conference 2018 took place in Mombasa, Kenya from October 17-20. A short report is now available and will be on the website soon. Next year’s Conference will take place in Lomé, Togo with dates to be confirmed.

During the Conference, a ground-breaking book was launched called “Mbinu wa Uwezeshaji” (meaning “Facilitation Techniques” in English) by Churchill Shakim from Tanzania.   Churchill is working on getting this translated to English and other languages. If you would like purchase a copy, please contact cs@tamasha.or.tz.

Facilitation Impact Awards – in Africa we got our first ever Platinum Award winner for Kofi Kumodzi’s work with ONAT (Ordre National des Architectes Togo). Congratulations Kofi for winning his second award. Thanks also to Materne Bossou and Julias Alego for their roles as Evaluators in the global process, and Kofi as well. More information about the 2018 winners can be read here and general information about F.I.A. can be found here.

The Africa Leadership Team is being re-structured for 2019 with 9 members – one representing each of the four sub-regions (North, East, Southern and West), one responsible for Member Engagement, one for Marketing & Partnerships, two for Communications, and the Regional Director as Chair.

Congratulations to our two new Global Board Members who were recently elected for the period 2019-20. Kofi Kumodzi will become Regional Director for the Africa Region and Materne Bossou will become Director of Memberships & Chapters.

We also now have our sixth Chapter in the region and the first in the North Africa sub-region, which is in Tunisia. We look forward to continued growth and active participation from Tunisia and elsewhere in the Maghreb area.

IAF now has its second Special Interest Group (S.I.G.), an initiative by Social Inclusion Facilitators from East Africa.  The S.I.G. aims to link with other facilitators working on Social Inclusion / Diversity and Inclusion and act as a platform to organize on a global level.  Another group of Francophone facilitators are also looking to organize themselves as an S.I.G. in the near future.

We are planning two Certified Professional Facilitator (C.P.F.) events in the region in 2019. One will be in Arusha, Tanzania in July and the other in Lomé, Togo in October. To support these, there will be two webinars – on January 8th in English, and January 9th in French – for potential candidates to meet with current C.P.F.s, ask questions and understand the process better.  If you would like to book at place at one of these, please contact rep.africa@iaf-world.org.

John Cornwell
IAF Regional Director for Africa