Public procurement in Ethiopia has undergone several important reforms in recent years. Procurement has been delegated to regional and urban administrations, and procuring entities now use standardised processes and documents in their operations. To complement this reform, Crown Agents was contracted to ensure Ethiopia’s procurement professionals were adequately trained and properly supported.

Crown Agents has delivered a comprehensive training package to Ethiopia’s public procurement authority, the FPPA, to produce a cadre of certified procurement professionals.

Key achievements 

• Reviewing and modifying existing procurement competency frameworks to make them fit for purpose.
• Developing training modules and certification programmes, covering basic, essential, advanced and specialist levels of competence.
• Providing Training of Trainers (ToT) sessions, enhancing the capacity of local staff.
• Providing technical assistance to FPPA to enable the roll out of a pilot certification training programme.

Providing pilot training courses to achieve certification
In addition to training a cohort of procurement trainers, Crown Agents provided technical assistance to the FPPA, enabling them to roll out a pilot certification programme, which saw a total of 199 attendees sit examinations to become certified at various levels of competence.

Through conducting this training, Crown Agents consultants helped trainers identify areas of risk and provided recommendations to overcome specific problems in the delivery of the training modules. It is expected that thousands of procurement professionals will go on to be trained, providing Ethiopia with a certified and qualified procurement workforce ready for future challenges.