Capacity-building and Institutional Support for the Nouadhibou Free Zone Authority

Unlocking the full potential of Nouadhibou Free Zone using the Jordanian expertise

1. Organizational Structure and Human Resources Management, 
2. Financial Management, 
3. Information Technology, and 
4. One-Stop-Shop Systems (OSS) 

The Capacity Building and Institutional Support project itself consisted of a consortium of various operators, national authorities and international developmental associations who, over time, helped bring the project to fruition. At its core, the project was designed as a knowledge-transfer between ASEZA and the NFZA, in the domains of Human Resource Management, Finance, IT and (OSS). The choice for the knowledge partner  itself stemmed from a previous study on behalf of the NFZA for the establishment of a Special Economic Zone in the Nouadhibou region . The study had pre-selected various economic zones across the globes and cross-compared these on basis of similitude to that of Nouadhibou. ASEZA was selected as the optimal choice of reference and a model on which to deduce a set of best practices that would be transferable to the NFZA.  

During the project, 21 senior staff from the NFZA’s various corporate support departments were impacted by the ASEZA’s training and Centre of Excellence, with a total of 240 training days. The training consisted of 2 missions, one in the fourth quarter of 2017 and another in the first quarter of 2018. The listed departments were, respectively, those of HR, IT, Finance and ASEZA’s OSS. 

The project aimed to enable Nouadhibou Free Zone Authority (NFZA), to adopt international practices in organization design, human resources management, financial planning and management through a twinning program with the successful model of Aqabah Special Economic Zone. 

The achievements of this project can be listed as follows: 

• At the end of the project, a complete strategy to enhance revenue and reduce costs was completed and staff were trained on financial planning and optimization.  
• The NFZA HR core team was fully trained under the program “Modern Trends in Human Resources Management” (org. structure, job description, performance appraisal, training needs & plan). 
• The NFZA Finance staff was trained on new financial and accounting policies & procedures manual under the program “Financial affairs staff training: Development of Financial and Accounting Policies & Procedures Manual”. 
• IT skills of end-users and IT team were improved via capacity building, in order for them to interact with the planned technology upgrade. 
• The current OSS Solution  was upgraded via capacity building.  

In terms of sustainability, the involvement of the Government of Mauritania from the beginning shows the level of ownership and commitment and not only to implement this important project but also to continue benefiting from it in the future. This would ensure benefiting from the knowledge acquired with the support of the Jordanian counterpart and also continuing to develop them to stay in line with international best practices. Furthermore, the MoU signed among ICD NFZA and ASEZA is another strong element to ensure the continuity of cooperation between Jordan and Mauritania in continuing to work for the development of Free Zone authorities.