By Kgothatso Shai, Prof.

President: SAAPAM

02 December 2025, Isibayeni Lodge – Kingdom of Iswatini

Distinguished delegates, receive fraternal greetings from the South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM).

Dr John Nakabago, President of the African Association of Public Administration and Management (AAPAM), in the best interest of time, kindly allow me to ride on the protocol established by the programme director and previous speakers. Mr President, last year you challenged us to ensure that all public servants and academics in our fraternity should be members of SAAPAM as a professional body, I can report to you in confidence that the South African Qualification Authority (SAQA) has recognised us as a professional body, this simply means that all public servants should be members of the Association as we professionalise the Public Service. Indeed, we achieved the milestone. And thank you for your continued support.

As the premier and oldest platform of cooperation between public affairs scholars and practitioners in South Africa, we are committed to the promotion of “Public Service Excellence through cutting edge Scholarship and Research”. This is such an ambitious mandate which we strive to realise through collaboration efforts with like-minded associations such as AAPAM and government institutions which are instrumental in assisting us to bridge the widening gap between theory and practice. We are equally honoured to be an integral part of such an all-important initiative in the form of the 44th Round Table conference of AAPAM staged under the theme “Agile Public Administration: Partnership and Digital Transformation for Citizen-Centric Service Delivery”. The importance of the choice of this theme and the work of AAPAM in its totality cannot be over-emphasised. We hope that this conference will indeed leave a lasting legacy for the agility of public administration for the benefit of efficient and equitable service centred on the citizens and communities. This should be understood within the context that in terms of our culture as Africans, the citizen is incomplete unless it is rooted in communalism and cooperation. This is the essence of ubuntu, the root of African philosophy. While embracing partnership and digital transformation in line global trends, the foregoing observation underscores the equal importance of humanising public service. There is no gainsaying that the work of AAPAM provides continental footprint and wider impact for our shared aspirations and goals. This not only important for us as professional body of Public Administration in South Africa, but it also echoes the Afrocentric focus and orientation of our country’s foreign policy. With these few words, we wish you a fruitful deliberations and impactful knowledge exchanges as you discourse lessons and/or best practices towards improved partnership and digital transformation within the public service and administration.

I thank you!