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GITEX Africa 2023 and Fujn Join Forces for the Representation of Women in Tech

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3 years ago

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Fujn

Fujn has a community of over 100,000 women from diverse backgrounds, educational levels, specialties, and expertise

SOUSSE, Tunisia, May 25, 2023/APO Group/ — 

Fujn might be one of the few tech startups, if not the only startup, exhibiting at GITEX AFRICA 2023 (https://GITEXAfrica.com/) with 10 women coming from 6 countries and 4 continents. It is a privilege for us to be representing women in a significant way and in a historic technology event inaugurated for the first time in the African continent. Fujn is headquartered in Boston, USA. It is a tech startup designed by women, built by women, developed by women, executed by women, and funded (bootstrapped) by women, for women’s future of work. Fujn is founded in 2022, operates with a team of 20 women across 10 countries. Our upskilling platform has 5,000 women actively learners. Our community has 100,000 women living in 22 countries. So far, the most traction we have received, is in Africa and Southeast Asia. We have launched 6 services as of today and have 10 additional services to follow. We are fusing upskilling, work, and life of women, seamlessly. Hence, the word Fujn, which stands for fusion.

When we had the idea, a few years ago, to tackle the future of work of women, generative AI was not yet in the public spotlight. However, we knew then that the digital adoption has only one expected trajectory, which is becoming mainstream, across the globe. At that moment, we understood that the AI genie was out of the bottle, and no one could stop it. We can only manage it, be innovative about it, and implement sensible guardrails for the good of humans. We only knew that we must work harder and smarter to direct this zeitgeist to a positive outcome. The mission we have chosen is to help women thrive, with or without AI.

Fujn is honored to be taking on the role of representing women in a prominent technology conference, such as GITEX AFRICA 2023. Technology has become the brain of all economies. And women represent 50% of the markets within these economies. We believe representation is a sign of civilization advancement. We are convinced that representation is the logical illustration of human rights and democracy. We pursue this mission of representing women in technology in a material way. By material, we mean to represent women in the GITEX AFRICA 2023 event as tech founders, tech architects, tech investors, tech strategists, and tech enthusiasts. We are traveling to Africa to tell our story. More importantly, we would like to inspire many more stories, even better than ours, to come. Our big picture is anchored on the belief that digitalization is women’s historic chance to achieve gender equity if they pursue it. Digital brings:

  • Learning, upskilling, knowledge, and know-how to their homes
  • Remote and flexible jobs, freelance, gigs, entrepreneurship to their homes
  • Global mentors, career counselors, and experts’ guidance to their homes
  • Role models in one big global ecosystem that will inspire them how to start and execute
  • Funding, if the idea is solid and the business plan is convincing

Gender equity, if enacted well, is estimated to boost Africa’s economy with an additional 1 trillion dollars and the Moroccan economy with an incremental $150 billion, by the year 2025.

For Company Recruiters:

At Fujn, we are working and hoping to build both a culture and a community of women who are self-aware but selfless, ambitious but balanced, expert but well-rounded in knowledge. We are working to inspire women to strive for a high IQ, but also for a high EQ. And now we are also aware of a thing called AQ, which stands for Adaptability Quotient. This word emerges with the shift happening in the future of work, accelerated with generative AI. AQ means workers must quickly adapt or inevitably become irrelevant. Fujn has a community of over 100,000 women from diverse backgrounds, educational levels, specialties, and expertise. Fujnistas, as we address our users, are doctors, architects, attorneys, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, creatives, artists, and engineers… Our community is growing fast, and we are offering recruiters access to a large pool of women talent with a high self-drive and a growth mindset that would advance any organization. Recruiters get many benefits from hiring women. They get the talent they require and the diversity they need. They get a workforce that represents 50% of their market who starts thinking with them, designing products with the right market fit for women, articulating messages that resonate with women, and setting HR policies that suit the non-linear lives of women thereby ensuring productivity, sustainable diversity, and the company’s long-term performance.

For Investors:

When we talk about a tech startup working on gender equity, it is helpful to give the context of this business. Typically, investors do not pay enough attention to understand how investing in startups like ours has a double benefit: the potential for a high IRR and ROI plus the positive social impact as an ESG business. Below are some data for Investors’ thoughts:

  •  As of March 2023, the Biden Administration has proposed the largest-ever US investment in gender equality programs, with US$3.1 billion for gender programs in FY2024. This budget proposal furthers the US administration’s aim to secure gender as a cross-cutting priority on both the domestic and global front.
  •  Assets in U.S. gender equity funds have doubled over the trailing three years to $1.3 billion, as of the end of February 2023, Morningstar found. Yet those funds represent less than 0.01% of total equity fund assets in the US.
  • The total ODA disbursements related to gender equality amounted to $30 billion, with Germany, the EU, the US, the UK, and Canada as the top 5 donors.
  • According to the UN, more than 100 countries have taken action to track budget allocations for gender equality.

We are working and hoping to build both a culture and a community of women who are self-aware but selfless, ambitious but balanced, expert but well-rounded in knowledge

We are a week away from the conference and are pleased to have piqued the attention of 15 investors who either invited us to meet or confirmed our request to meet them. The Fujn team cannot wait to tell these investors how we are executing our vision to build an insanely cool platform for an insanely cool mission of “enabling women to become economically independent skilled leaders.”

Human-Machine Equity (HME):

The time published on May 16, 2023: “Sam Altman, whose company is on the extreme forefront of generative AI technology with its ChatGPT tool, testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and echoed his previous assertion that lawmakers should create parameters for AI creators to avoid causing “significant harm to the world.”

AI presents significant benefits but also momentous risks associated with many facets of the future: bias, democracy, security, wealth and power distribution, surveillance, freedoms….etc. However, the risk of jobs loss is the most obvious and imminent one:

  • Goldman Sachs Predicts 300 million jobs will be lost or degraded by AI
  • Oliver Wyman says 50 million Chinese workers must be retrained by 2030, as a result of AI-related deployment.
  • The U.S. will be required to retool 11.5 million people with the skills needed to survive in the workforce. 
  • Wells Fargo says robots would eliminate 200,000 jobs in the banking industry in the next 10 years.
  • Well-trained doctors could be pushed aside by sophisticated robots that could perform delicate surgeries more precisely and read X-rays more accurately to detect cancerous cells than the human eye.

This leads us to think: Women have requested, for a very long time, gender equity, because women’s lives are not the same as men’s. Hence, giving men and women the same treatment at work has been NOT equitable. Life’s mysteries are now calling us to advocate for EQUITY between men and women as humans versus intelligent machines. Here is why:

  • Machines do NOT need to sleep and work 24/7
  • Machines do NOT a vacation, fall sick, take sick leave, or need a social life
  • Machines learn in weeks what humans learn in decades
  • Machines do NOT demand a salary and benefits
  • Machines do NOT require a corporate contribution to their retirement account
  • Machines do NOT join unions
  • Machines do NOT retire at their own discretion

Regulators, corporate leaders, legislators, activists, economists, and humanists, all have the duty to advocate for human-machine equity (HME) before it is too late. Fujn will continue to advocate for both, gender equity and Human-Machine equity (HME).

Strategic Partnerships:

We are now working to explain how we want to cooperate with African governments to include women in the next wave of opportunities created by technology, and how to leverage technology to include women, in the economic fabric of societies. When we say include, we mean to include women in a structural way, not as an afterthought. We mean in all sectors, in all occupations, and in all levels of responsibilities starting from the top, not the bottom. We mean to include women in the design stage of everything, technology, legislation, policies, and strategies. We have high anticipation to explore partnership opportunities with participating inter-governmental agencies from Korea, Abu Dhabi, and Japan. We respect the work that the teams at Mastercard and OCP Group are doing in the areas of upskilling and women. It will be our privilege to join forces with them to transform the lives of some women for the better.

We are happy to share that Khadija Khartit, Fujn’s founder, will be speaking on behalf of Fujn team on the stage of GITEX AFRICA 2023 about two topics:

Panel 1-The Importance of Equality, Inclusion, and Diversity in Tech​:

On this topic, She will be share her thoughts on the inclusion of women, immigrants, and minorities. She would like to raise awareness about the inclusion of the neurodiverse and the disabled as the mother of an autistic child and an advocate for special needs individuals. She also wants to raise awareness about the benefits of diverse expertise in tech design: humanities, art, law, social sciences, behavioral sciences, regulation, public administration….and more, in addition to hard science and tech expertise. Tech design done by cross-functional teams who consider eventual unintended consequences is a MUST with AI to avoid major harm to humans.

Panel 2- Building Technical Growth Communities for Women in Tech​: ​

This topic is core to Fujn as our main mission is to help women “be in the know” about technology and to train them on how to leverage it to build minds, hearts, wallets, and better lives. We see technology as a magic tool for women to reimagine their possibilities. When the word technical is mentioned, some women get intimidated when they should not. Women can be senior directors in tech startups without knowing how to code, but it is a plus, if women code. Mrs. Khartit is hoping to inspire women to get curious, to immerse themselves in tech, its landscape, players, and lingo because, after that, their horizons will inevitably expand.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of GITEX Africa.

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PhotonPay Raises $40M Series C to Scale Its Stablecoin-Centric Financial OS

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2 days ago

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October 30, 2026

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Financial OS

Led by Blockchain Capital, the funding will accelerate the expansion of PhotonPay’s stablecoin-centric Financial OS, connecting stablecoin liquidity with global fiat networks to unlock digital assets for everyday corporate operations and cross-border settlement.
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 29 October 2026 – PhotonPay today announced the closing of a $40 million Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from new investor SBI Group and follow-on investments from existing investors IDG Capital, GL Ventures, and Lightspeed Faction. Blacksheep Technology acted as exclusive financial advisor to PhotonPay on the transaction.

 




 
 

The new capital will support the expansion of PhotonPay’s stablecoin-centric Financial Operating System (Financial OS), with investment focused on enhancing multi-asset wallet capabilities, expanding global card issuing, strengthening local clearing infrastructure in key markets, and developing an agent-ready financial execution layer.

As of August 2026, PhotonPay’s annualized transaction volume reached US$65 billion. The company has secured 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and serves over 200,000 business customers across more than 200 countries and territories.

As stablecoins move beyond crypto-native use cases into corporate treasury, settlement and commercial spending, PhotonPay sees the next phase of global finance not as a choice between stablecoins and fiat currencies, but as the convergence of both. Its Financial OS connects on-chain liquidity with the banking, clearing and card networks businesses rely on for everyday operations.

“Moving money across borders in seconds means little if it still takes days to put that capital to work,” said Lewison Chen, Founder and CEO of PhotonPay. “Stablecoins are accelerating global money movement, while local clearing and global card issuing connect that liquidity to local settlement and everyday business spending. Our Financial OS brings these capabilities together, making the underlying infrastructure far less visible to businesses, even as it becomes more essential than ever.”

“At the same time, business software is becoming increasingly autonomous,” Chen added. “AI is shifting financial workflows from people manually operating fragmented tools toward systems that understand business intent and coordinate execution across assets, accounts and financial rails. That creates the foundation for agentic commerce. Stablecoins change how money moves. AI changes how it gets put to work. But commerce is still what money is for.”

Moving Money Across Assets and Markets

PhotonPay’s Financial OS brings together multi-asset wallets, global money movement, foreign exchange, local clearing, and global card issuing through an integrated API-first architecture. This unified system gives businesses access to the financial capabilities they need to manage and deploy funds across markets.

Stablecoins sit at the core of this architecture. PhotonPay’s multi-asset wallet connects stablecoin liquidity with fiat balances, integrating asset conversion, foreign exchange, and local clearing into a single connected workflow. This enables businesses to move funds across supported on-chain and traditional financial networks, turning digital asset liquidity into purchasing power for local payments and everyday corporate spending.

Supporting this dual-rail infrastructure is PhotonPay’s established global financial network. Businesses can open local collection accounts in 17 key markets and receive funds in more than 60 currencies. On the payout side, the network supports over 100 payment routes across local clearing systems, bank transfers, and digital wallets, including payouts to 74 major local e-wallets. Approximately 97% of payout transactions reach recipients within hours or on the same day, with 68% arriving in real time.

Global card issuing extends these capabilities into programmable business spending. Through PhotonPay’s APIs, businesses and platforms can issue virtual and physical cards, configure granular spending controls, and embed card payments directly into their software and automated workflows. Over the past 12 months, PhotonPay issued 4.4 million cards, up 275% YoY.

Beyond its first-party payment solutions, PhotonPay makes its infrastructure available through embedded finance, enabling technology platforms to natively integrate global accounts, payments, and card issuing into their own products. The company now serves more than 100 enterprise and platform partners, extending the reach of its Financial OS into industry-specific workflows.

From Financial Intent to Agentic Commerce

As AI agents assume active operational roles, financial infrastructure must evolve beyond API access to enable programmable, policy-governed execution. It requires systems capable of translating high-level instructions into coordinated financial actions, with deterministic controls governing how those actions are executed.

In May 2026, PhotonPay and Mastercard completed a live agentic payment demonstration using a tokenized PhotonPay card, validating AI-initiated transactions across existing global card networks.

Building on this milestone, PhotonPay is developing standardized financial interfaces designed for developers and AI agents. With planned support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), PhotonPay aims to make account information, balances, card functions, and payments accessible as composable financial primitives, allowing AI agents to securely retrieve context and initiate financial workflows within defined authorization boundaries.

To govern this agent-ready layer, PhotonPay is developing a policy-based execution framework designed to enforce programmable authorization rules, spending limits, and transaction-level controls. The framework is intended to enable AI agents to coordinate financial tasks across supported accounts and assets, while ensuring that execution remains subject to explicit, enforceable policies set by businesses.

PhotonPay is also advancing its AI-assisted risk review capabilities, designed to identify complex cases for human assessment. Together, these initiatives reflect a foundational principle of autonomous finance: AI may interpret intent and coordinate tasks, but financial execution must remain governed by verifiable authorization, deterministic controls, and auditable records.

“Connecting financial networks is only the beginning. The real breakthrough is abstracting that complexity behind a unified, programmable financial layer, so businesses and AI agents can move from intent to execution within clearly defined boundaries,” said Chen.

Simple on the Surface, Deep by Design

The promise of a Financial OS is simplicity: enabling businesses to manage assets, route money, and execute payments through a unified financial operating layer. Yet delivering that simplicity requires deep financial infrastructure beneath the surface.

While stablecoins accelerate borderless value transfer, turning that liquidity into local settlement, supplier payments, and corporate spending still depends on established banking relationships, domestic clearing rails, foreign exchange infrastructure, and global card networks. Each market brings its own regulatory and operational requirements.

For PhotonPay, building a Financial OS means abstracting these fragmented global networks into a programmable, interconnected financial system. The objective is not to eliminate financial complexity, but to manage it within the underlying infrastructure, so businesses can operate without having to navigate these systems themselves.

“AI can simplify how businesses interact with financial services, but it cannot replace the infrastructure required to deliver them,” said JP Pi, Chief Compliance Officer at PhotonPay. “Establishing local financial capabilities takes years of investment, institutional partnerships, and regulatory engagement. Software or AI models alone cannot replicate that depth. The simplicity businesses experience is the result of that heavy lifting, not a substitute for it.”

PhotonPay has engineered a financial foundation spanning both stablecoin and fiat rails, connecting multi-asset conversion with local clearing networks. Institutional partnerships with J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, and DBS, alongside connections to domestic payment systems such as Brazil’s Pix and Mexico’s SPEI, form the backbone of this network.

The new capital will enable PhotonPay to strengthen its local clearing and compliance infrastructure in existing markets while expanding into new jurisdictions, scaling the reach of its Financial OS across corporate spending, embedded finance, and agentic commerce.

“Businesses want one provider that can handle their payments across currencies and markets, whether they’re using bank transfers, stablecoins or cards. Lewison and his team have spent a decade building the banking relationships, licenses and local payment infrastructure to deliver that. We believe PhotonPay’s ability to bring these capabilities together gives it a strong advantage as businesses adopt stablecoins for everyday payments.” – BCAP，Yuanhan Li，Partner

“As stablecoins become increasingly integrated into global payment systems, bridging digital assets with traditional financial infrastructure will be essential to unlocking their real-world potential. PhotonPay’s established global payment network and its vision for a stablecoin-centric Financial OS align closely with SBI Group’s strategy to advance digital financial infrastructure and expand the practical adoption of digital assets. We look forward to supporting PhotonPay’s continued growth and exploring opportunities for strategic collaboration across the SBI Group ecosystem.” – Eiichiro So, CEO & Managing Director of SBI Ven Capital
 




 

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Hainan economic, trade delegation visits Hong Kong for investment promotion, 2 cooperation memoranda signed

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2 days ago

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October 30, 2026

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Hong Kong

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 29 October 2026 – From October 19 to 20, an economic and trade delegation from Hainan Province paid a visit to Hong Kong. The delegation signed memoranda of cooperation respectively withThe Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong (CMA)and the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (FHKI) to advance pragmatic cross-border collaboration between Hainan and Hong Kong in trade and investment, manufacturing industrial chains and professional services.

 




 
 

During its stay in Hong Kong, the delegation visited the CCPIT Representative Office in Hong Kong. It held discussions with CMA and co-hosted the Hainan Free Trade Port (Hong Kong) Economic and Trade Cooperation Exchange Meeting with FHKI. The event showcased the policies, key industrial layout and investment opportunities of the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP), and arranged one-on-one business matchmaking between Hainan and Hong Kong enterprises.

Wang Yuyuan, Vice President of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Hainan Sub-council (CCPIT Hainan) and China Chamber of International Commerce Hainan Chamber of Commerce, noted that since the official launch of island-wide special customs operations at the Hainan FTP on December 18, 2025, 174,000 new enterprises have been registered, representing a year-on-year surge of 95.9 percent. Newly established foreign-invested enterprises rose by 35.8 percent year on year. In the first half of this year, inbound and outbound tourist arrivals exceeded 70 million, up 28 percent year on year, with the number of visa-free entry countries expanding to 88. From January to August, the province’s total goods import and export volume hit 250 billion yuan, growing by 61.5 percent year on year. Hainan is rapidly emerging as a critical gateway connecting China with the rest of the world and a prime channel for two-way investment.

According to CCPIT Hainan, Hong Kong ranks as a major source of foreign investment for Hainan. In the first half of this year, Hainan registered 1,303 new foreign-invested enterprises, an increase of 38.62 percent year on year, with Hong Kong-funded enterprises accounting for the lion’s share. Hainan has issued offshore RMB local government bonds in Hong Kong for four consecutive years, with a cumulative issuance volume reaching 18 billion yuan.

CMA is one of Hong Kong’s most representative non-profit industrial and commercial bodies, with around 3,000 member enterprises. It has long provided members with business services including exhibitions, brand promotion, testing and certification. FHKI, one of Hong Kong’s four major chambers of commerce, has approximately 2,000 corporate members. It focuses on boosting the sustained development of Hong Kong industry and manufacturing through policy advocacy, business matchmaking, certification services and youth talent cultivation.

The two memoranda explicitly stipulate that the two sides will establish a regular liaison mechanism, build a long-term cooperation platform covering information sharing, business matchmaking, exhibition collaboration and professional services, and provide solid support for pragmatic business cooperation between Hainan and Hong Kong enterprises.

Source: China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Hainan Provincial Committee (CCPIT Hainan)

 
 




 

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Africa gains governance momentum in the 2026 Chandler Good Government Index, but sustaining progress is the real test

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2 days ago

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October 29, 2026

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Africa

Across Africa, average scores improved in six of the seven CGGI pillars over the past year, with the strongest gains in Helping People Rise and Financial Stewardship

This signals that stronger government capabilities are beginning to translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives

KIGALI, Rwanda, October 29, 2026/APO Group/ –Africa was the second best-performing region for governance progress in the 2026 Chandler Good Government Index (CGGI), with 71% of the African countries assessed in both 2025 and 2026 achieving higher overall scores. However, the continent remains the lowest-scoring region overall, highlighting the challenge of translating improvement in government capabilities into better outcomes for citizens.

 




 
 

These findings were highlighted by the Chandler Governance Group (CGG) at a joint session with the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) to launch the 13th edition of the Rwanda Governance Scorecard at the Kigali Serena Hotel on Thursday, 22 October 2026.

“This year, Africa’s strongest gains came in Financial Stewardship, followed by Helping People Rise, the CGGI’s outcomes pillar. This signals that stronger government capabilities are beginning to translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives, from access to quality education and healthcare to the public finances that fund them. The task now is to sustain that progress over the coming years,” says Dinesh Naidu, Director (Knowledge) at CGG.

Now in its sixth edition, the CGGI assesses government capabilities and effectiveness across 133 countries representing 94% of the world’s population, up from 120 countries in 2025. It measures 35 equally weighted indicators across seven pillars, providing governments with a framework to benchmark performance, identify gaps and learn from the experience of other countries.

Globally, the findings point to improving governance performance. Of the 120 countries assessed in both 2025 and 2026, 61% recorded higher scores, representing the highest annual share of countries improving since the Index launched in 2021. However, longer-term progress has been less consistent, with only 43% of the 104 countries tracked since 2021 recording an overall improvement.

Africa’s leading governments

Mauritius remains Africa’s highest-ranked country, placing 55th globally, followed by Rwanda (62nd), Botswana (70th), Morocco (79th) and Tanzania (80th). South Africa ranks sixth on the continent, in 85th place globally.

Rwanda features prominently in the discussion, ranking 11th globally for Leadership & Foresight and emerging as the highest-ranked low-income country in the Index. It ranks 61 places above where its income alone would predict. Across the Index, government capabilities track citizen outcomes more closely than national wealth does, suggesting that strengthening government capabilities matter in delivering better outcomes for citizens.

The joint session brings together the CGGI’s international benchmarks and the Rwanda Governance Scorecard’s assessment of governance in the Rwandan context, creating an opportunity to consider both global perspectives and country-specific priorities.

Progress across key governance pillars

Across Africa, average scores improved in six of the seven CGGI pillars over the past year, with the strongest gains in Helping People Rise and Financial Stewardship. These improvements point to progress in areas associated with public services, including healthcare and education, as well as the management of public finances.

Longer-term trends also highlight areas of progress. Between 2021 and 2026, nearly every African country assessed across the period improved its Data Capability score, with Morocco recording the largest gains. Ghana’s overall score improved in 2026, supported by stronger Financial Stewardship, while South Africa continues to show relative strength in Robust Laws & Policies, ranking 44th globally, and Attractive Marketplace, ranking 48th.

Despite these gains, the scale of the challenge remains clear. Africa’s regional average is still below its 2021 level, 23 of the 35 African countries in the 2026 Index rank outside the global top 100, and none is in the top 50. Seven African countries joined the Index this year: Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia and Togo.

“Rankings provide a useful starting point, but the broader value of the CGGI lies in helping governments understand where they are making progress and where further work is needed. Sustained improvements depend on the ability to strengthen institutions, manage resources responsibly and turn policy into meaningful outcomes for citizens,” says Naidu.

A tool for learning and improvement

The CGGI is designed as a practical diagnostic tool, helping governments identify gaps, track progress over time, and learn from peers facing similar constraints. The collaboration with the RGB brings international benchmarking together with locally grounded assessment.

“Every country faces its own governance challenges and is driven by varying priorities. Governments that are willing to take stock of the evidence and learn from peers to strengthen their institutions are well placed to achieve real improvements,” concludes Naidu.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Chandler Governance Group.

 

 




 

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