KAMPALA-The International Cooperative Alliance [ICA ] President, Ariel Guarco has been appointed by the board to the post of Director General in the interim, with effect from March 1, 2023. The appointment is to cover the period following the departure of Bruno Roelants, upon the completion of his five-year term of office, and the appointment of a substantive replacement.
According to the ICA website, the board has engaged the recruitment consultant, Norman Broadbent, to assist in reviewing a number of applications and is hopeful of being able to announce the successful candidate shortly.
“We would like to thank Bruno Roelants for all his efforts over the past 5 years as ICA Director General and 16 years as Secretary General of CICOPA, our sectorial organisation for cooperatives in industry and services. There is no doubt that he has made a significant contribution to the increased recognition of the strengths of the Cooperative model around the world,” says on its website.
Roelants became Director General of the ICA in April 2018, serving five years, during which the ICA membership increased from 306 members at the end of 2017 to 315 members today.
Among others Roelants was instrumental in:
Leading the design of an ICA member surveying early 2018, which was the most in-depth (59 questions) and most responded [62 percent response rate] ICA member survey on record, allowing us at the Global Office, and the ICA Board, to better understand ICA members’ needs and expectations.
Working with the ICA Board in elaborating for more than a year the ICA 2020-2030 Strategic Plan, which had been requested by the 2017 ICA General Assembly in Kuala Lumpur and was approved by the 2019 General Assembly in Kigali, and is presently guiding the ICA activities year after year.
Leading the organisation and programming of the ICA Kigali conference “Cooperatives for Development” where the whole ICA global team, as well as the ICA regional and sectoral organisations, were involved; it was the second ICA global conference ever held in Africa and the first one fully dedicated to development, with around 1000 participants from 94 countries; it was also the largest event of the above-mentioned 2016-2021 ICA-EU Framework Partnership Agreement.
Overseeing the launch of a cooperative-to-cooperative trade project cycle with the International Trade Centre [ITC, the joint cooperation agency of UNCTAD and WTO for business aspects of trade development] through a first pilot project in 2021, with other projects now in preparation.
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