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5
Chapter
60 Years of ECA Programmatic Orientation
The first decade coincided with the independence of the majority of countries in Africa. It was thus a decade when special emphasis was placed on laying the foundations for institutional and human resource development across the region. Besides setting up the administrative framework of the secretariat, ECA focused its initial programme on the compelling development issues of the time: building capacities for development through training in development planning, agriculture, industrial development, transport and natural resources management. These were underpinned by the development of statistics for social and economic research and development planning.
At the same time, the Commission not only promoted the creation of numerous important regional and subregional institutions, such as the African Development Bank, but also established its own subregional offices for West Africa in Niamey in 1963, North Africa in Tangiers in 1963, Eastern and Southern Africa in Lusaka in 1964 and Central Africa in Kinshasa in 1965. The structure and locations of these offices were subsequently realigned with the regional economic communities as they evolved over the years.
