A flagship event organized by the BDCG is the annual National BDS Conference, which brings such stakeholders as donors, facilitators, MSMEs, government, private sector, and small-holder actors.
The 5th National BDS Conference was held from 6th to 7th October 2009 at Whitesands Beach Resort, Mombasa, Kenya. The highly successful event brought together 129 participants from several organizations to discuss issues surrounding business environment reforms. Participants were drawn from different countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Malawi, and Zambia.
This year's conference, the fifth in an annual series of such events was bigger and addressed a range of broader issues. The theme, Business Environment Reforms to Make Markets Work for the Poor, was adequately tackled by the panel of Senior Kenya Government Officials on Day1 of the conference. The opening speech made by the Assistant Minister for Industrialisation, Hon Ndiritu Muriithi highlighted the policy reforms the Kenyan Government has made to improve the business climate. The panel of senior government officials comprised Dr Bitange Ndemo, PS Information and Communication Technology, Dr Wilson Songa, Agriculture Secretary, and Eng John Mosonik, Industrialisation Secretary. Participants engaged the panel on policy reforms that have been spearheaded by respective ministries after listening to their presentations. Conference participants listened to various speakers at plenary and had a choice of four break-out sessions where varied presentations were made and discussed in interactive sessions.
Sixty five (65) participants attended the highly rated pre-conference training, Principles of Market Development, facilitated by Margie Brand, an international trainer that was sponsored by USAID Washington.
Participants rated this conference very highly, with 93% and 97% expressing satisfaction with the technical content and logistical arrangements respectively.
You can download presentations made at the conference, the programme and speaker bios, as well as the list of participants by clicking on the links below. If you have a high-speed internet connection you can download the single pdf document (14MB) with all the presentations. The same publication is broken down into 1.38MB zipped sections for easier downloading. Individual presentations, alongside the conference reader, will be posted on our e-resource centre by 10 November 2009.
5th National BDS Conference Presentations PDF 14MB
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 1
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 2
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 3
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 4
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 5
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 6
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 7
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 8
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 9
5th National BDS Conference Presentations Part 10
5th National BDS Conference Participant List PDF 5th National BDS Conference Programme and Speaker Bios 6.7MB
Conference Readers
