Burundian Civil Service, Labour and Social Security Minister Annonciata Sendazirasa on Monday officially launched the seventh conference of African ministers of public and civil service.The five-day meeting attracts 22 public and civil service ministers and experts in public administration in the Burundi capital Bujumbura to exchange experience and discuss how to improve services. At the opening session, Sendazirasa said for three days, experts will work out a document that will be endorsed by ministers on Feb. 23-24. “During this conference, we will seek ways of reviewing the legislation of the public and civil service ministries in our respective countries especially in post-conflict countries like Burundi because our fragile legislation must be strengthened as it only applied during the war,” She told the conference. “In a post-conflict country like Burundi, there are priority sectors whose legislation must change,” she said, adding that Africa’s post-conflict countries need strong and durable structures for the public administration. “Those structures must be reviewed and the gender dimension must be included in the public administration since during the war, leaders don’t care about granting positions to women in the public administration,” said the minister.Sendazirasa holds that fragile public administration causes vulnerability to corruption. Titus Ndamuki, permanent secretary at Kenya’s Public Service Ministry, said this conference aims to assess and establish linkages between governance and public administration capabilities and broader developmental agenda within the continent.
