Press Release

A workshop which brought together "KAIZEN x Cluster" trainers was held in Dar es Salaam from 20 to 21 May 2021 through the"Project on Strengthening Manufacturing Enterprises through Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAIZEN)" - a project which has jointly been implemented by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) since 2013. In this Project, an activity called "Development of model for KAIZEN promotion in connection with Industrial Cluster Development" was implemented with the following objectives:

1. To disseminate, promote and implement the KAIZEN concept widely, through Industrial Clusters, in addition to the ordinary ways to reach individual firms.
2. To position KAIZEN services as a tool for Industrial Clusters in an attempt to increase competitiveness of the Clusters.

The Project selected 3 Industrial Clusters (i.e. Grape Cluster in Dodoma, Metal Engineering Cluster Initiative in Morogoro, and Mbeya Rice Group) and Kagera (i.e. which has more than 100 micro business enterprises) as pilot exercises, and they had implemented KAIZEN activities for several companies of each Cluster from early 2020 to February 2021.

This workshop brought together KAIZEN trainers from Dodoma, Kagera, Mbeya, Morogoro, and Dar es Salaam Regions. They were selected by the Tanzania Kaizen Unit (TKU, which is a unit in MIT responsible for KAIZEN promotion) based on the fact that they had engaged themselves in KAIZEN consulting activities including the above Cluster development activities. They shared their experiences including effects and impacts of KAIZEN consulting services through discussions and presentations in order to upgrade their services in terms of process, pricing, standardized materials, duration, and so on.

Some of the results of the workshop are expected to be shared at the coming Africa KAIZEN Annual Conference (AKAC) 2021, which will be held in August 2021 and hosted by the Government of Tanzania, in collaboration with the African Union Development Agency (AUDA) and JICA. The "Tanzanian KAIZEN model", which is combined with Industrial Cluster Development, will be featured prominently at the conference. The conference is the largest international event for KAIZEN in Africa, and about 200 participants from more than 10 African countries will join the conference online.

JICA will continue supporting KAIZEN and Industrial Cluster Development in Tanzania through technical cooperation, in order to achieve our shared goal of Tanzanian Industrialization together.

About KAIZEN and Industrial Cluster Development

"KAIZEN" is originally a Japanese word meaning "Improvement" and a management philosophy and know-how for continuous quality and productivity improvement of concerned organizations. It is also a human-oriented approach fostering teamwork, mindset change, self-reliance, creativity and ingenuity to come up with ideas for solutions to the problems we face in Tanzania.

"Industrial Cluster Development" is an approach which aims to drive industrialization by taking advantage of clustering, grouping geographically proximate and interconnected companies and associated institutions in a particular field. Encouraging proactive involvement of various actors along and around value chains and inducing collaboration among them help to promote innovation and local industrialization.

About AKAC (Africa KAIZEN Annual Conference) 2021

AKAC is the largest international event for KAIZEN in Africa, which is composed of conference and competition of KAIZEN activity (i.e. Africa KAIZEN Award). It has been organized annually since 2016 by African Union Development Agency - New Partnership for Africa's Development (AUDA-NEPAD) and JICA. AKAC 2020 was held in South Africa last September, and AKAC 2021 is planned to be hosted by the Government of Tanzania and held in Dar es Salaam in the end of August.

About JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency)

An incorporated administrative agency in charge of administering Japan's ODA (Official Development Assistance), is one of the world's largest bilateral aid agency supporting socio-economic development in developing countries in different regions of the world.

In Tanzania, JICA has been a long partner of Tanzania for more than 50 years in many sectors since 1962.

• For further information, please contact:

JICA Tanzania Office, P.O. Box 9450, Dar es Salaam,
Tel: 022-211327/30 Fax: 022-2112976
Mr. FUKUDA Kenji fukuda.kenji2@jica.go.jp
Ms. Mariam El Maamry Maamry-Mariam@jica.go.jp