The second meeting of Arab and African Consulting Engineers opened in Tunis Wednesday 19/11/2008 with the participation of 100 experts and representatives of regional organizations, including the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the coordinating group of Arab finance institutions.

The Arab and African consulting engineers meeting was first organized by the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) in Cairo, Egypt, in June 2007 and is aimed at continuing dialogue between the offices of consulting-engineers involved.

The objective of these meetings is to establish an efficient Arab-African partnership and strengthen the participation of these offices in working out techno-economic feasibility studies to oversee the implementation of projects.

 Several papers presented on these topics during the two days of work by experts who came from BADEA, AfDB, Tunisia, Senegal and Sudan.

In a statement, made available to PANA, the Director-General of BADEA, H.E. Mr. Abdelaziz KHELEF, said the institution organizing the meeting had targeted "a great partnership" between Arab and African offices specialized in the study it funded in sub-Saharan Africa and in overseeing the implementation of these projects. KHELEF said there was a "complementarily" between these offices in terms of technical ability, studies and project management as regards their effective presence on the ground.

 "We're working to ensure that African and Arab experts are able, in terms of studies and consultation, to respond to their own and resort to non-Arab and Africa n studies only in exceptional cases," he pointed out.

On the question of whether the international financial crisis would affect the p projects funded by BADEA in Africa, KHELEF said the institution he led had "no problem on this plan".
"We have the means and resources to meet all our commitments," he assured.