Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Ministry of Transport

Press Release
Date፡ October 18/2017 G.C

Ethiopia Hosts the 17th Regional Seminar for Labor-Based

Practitioners

The Ministry of Transport, on the joint press release with the ILO Ethiopia country
office, announced that Ethiopia hosts the 17th Regional Seminar for Labour – Based
Practitioners. The seminar will be held from November 13-17/ 2017 in Addis Ababa at
African Union conference hall.

The theme of the seminar is “Achieving Sustainable Development Goal, the Employment
Intensive Approach”
.
Ethiopia was popularly selected by the participants of the Regional Seminar held in
October 2015 to host the 17th Seminar. The Regional Seminar brings together
development professionals committed to pro-poor development through promotion of
local resource based approaches in the infrastructure and other job-rich sectors.

From humble beginnings as a small gathering of 21 labour-based engineers in Mabeya,

Tanzania, in 1990, the regional Seminar is now held at intervals of eighteen months, at a
different venue each time, within the African continent and conducted in sprit of
cooperation and international solidarity. The last Seminar, which was the sixteenth in the
series, was held in Cotonou, Benin, from the 26-30 October 2015 under the theme
“Facing the Challenges of Sustainable Development in the Context of Decentralization
with Employment intensive Investment Approaches”.

The Seminar participants come from a large of institutions, Government Ministries

responsible for infrastructure development and public employment programs, local
authorities, NGOs higher academic and training institutions, development partners, and
the private sector.

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The objective of the seminar is to promote cost-effective and sound engineering good
practice that are amenable to labour-based methods, whilst generating optimum
employment opportunities and minimizing the foreign capital drain implicit in the use of
technologies dependent on the use of heavy equipment particular for works that can be
done labour. The seminar is also intended to generate polices, strategies and programs
that are targeted at addressing teething social ills such as unemployment and poverty and
that contributes towards national economic development, wealth creation and social
progress.
The seminar will provide participants an opportunity to exchange ideas, share knowledge
and experiences as well as networking. In addition, participants will be apprised of new
policies, strategies, trends and working methods that promote the application of labour-
based technology in infrastructure delivery.
During the last seminar in Cotonou, Benin, Ethiopia was unanimously nominated to host
the 17th seminar in 2017. In making the nomination, participation, participants took
cognizance of :
Ethiopia’s pioneering role in labour-based technology for infrastructure
development in the Rural Roads construction and maintenance and the current
Universal Rural Road Access Program (URRAP)
Ethiopia has a full-fledged labour-based training capacity that is taking part in
building the capacities of implementing bodies at the national and state levels. The
training opportunity is also extended to the private sector and engineers and
technicians from neighboring countries.
The country is making significant progress in infrastructure development both in
urban and rural areas, which offers a good learning opportunity for the
participants.
Ethiopia is experimenting on various policy, strategy and program options for
addressing youth unemployment, which resulted in a dramatic increment in the
participation of the youth in the creation and maintenance of assets particularly in
the infrastructure, agriculture, energy, etc., sectors. The country is also
implementing a social safety net program aimed at addressing rural unemployment
and poverty and expand employment-based social protection floor for the most
vulnerable people.
Participants can be benefited from interactions with professionals involved in
these programs/projects and they in turn can share international good practices.
Ethiopia and the historic city of Addis Abeba provide unique opportunity for
conference tourism in addition to begin the seat of the African Union.

By bringing together such a large number of professional participants from diverse

countries, the seminar benefits the host country in terms of international exposition of its
policies, structures, programs and projects.
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The host country has an opportunity to use the seminar to demonstrate best practices, and
also appraise participants of its potential.

In the case of Ethiopia, the 17th seminar will also provide an opportunity to market its
product of technical expertise in the field of training and capacity building. And it also
creates an opportunity to show case Ethiopia’s long experience in the use of labour-based
technology (LBT) and youth development programs as well as its achievement in the
infrastructure development. On the other hand it will be a benchmark for Ethiopia’s
achievement in the infrastructure development to other countries implementing similar
programs, particularly in technology choice and quality assurance. The other benefit of
the seminar to the host country is it will expose young practitioners to share their
experiences, learn and network with their peers in the region and elsewhere.

For Further Information:

011 551-71-81
011 551-17-00