The Ethiopian Civil Service University (ESCU) launched its first Mentor’s Training Review workshop early October as part of the University’s on-going civil services sector human resource capacity building Master’s programme initiative.

This two year Master’s programme is currently in its fourth year and is jointly supported by UNDP Ethiopia and France’s École Nationale d'Administration (ENA).

Federal and regional public institutions’ representatives shared experiences on opportunities and challenges encountered in the last three years of internship coordination. In this internship exchange, mentors (public institution managers) are paired with mentees (prospect graduating students from ESU) whereby, the mentee engages in a wide variety of operations within the respective public institution.

The general objective of the internship is to ‘to help mentees develop knowledge, skills and attitudes from the experienced leaders working at federal, regional and local public institutions so that they arm themselves with the same and play a pivotal role in the transformation of the country’.

Dr Waqgari Negari, Director of the Institute of Leadership and Good Governance (ILG) at the ESCU emphasized on the “practical nature of the internships” stating that “experiential knowledge and skills obtained through the placements compliment theory taught at the institute and as a result, help build a strong human resource base that will service Ethiopian public institutions and contribute to the wider national transformational development agenda”. He also appreciated research and recommendations mentees produce during placements, both of which in turn continue to inform public institutions strategies for addressing gaps and challenges in order to ensure better performance and services delivery to the Ethiopian public.

Mr Rodrigue Furcy, Deputy Director of Internships at ENA reflected on France’s practices in coordinating internships, his experiences as a three-time intern at ENA and lessons learned over the years since ENA’s establishment in 1948. He both applauded and encouraged Ethiopia’s initiative. ENA’s partnership with ESCU also enables internship placements in a number of France’s public institutions placements of students or mentees from ESCU.

Best practices in internship implementation were shared from the Ethiopian Standards Agency (ESA) which was applauded for visionary leadership of its director, H.E. Mrs Almaz Kassaye. ESA conducts a thorough assessment of expectations from mentees; some of the recurring ones include ‘steps in effective decision making, strategizing directions and development planning, awareness on ESA’s strategic plan alignment to [the] Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), paradigm shift and mindset change (processes), human resource management and resource mobilization’, partnerships and largely, serving the Ethiopian public. ESA was commended for technical expertise mentees are able to share with it’s the agency’s staff through periodic trainings as part of the institutes’ implementation of the internship.

Ms Abrehet Mehari, Consultant Coordinator and Internship Modules Professional at ESCU led a discussion on challenges while facilitating inter-institution solutions and recommendations.

In addition to seconding human resources to public institutions through internships, ESCU provides clear guidelines on the process to maximize on gains for both mentors and mentees.

As way forward, Dr Waqgari said that similar mentor-mentee performance reviews will become more streamlined and frequent.