Congratulations are in order for our partners in Southern Africa. On 23 March 2023, the Southern African Development Community Cooperation in Accreditation Mutual Recognition Arrangement (SADCA MRA) was accepted as a recognized Regional Accreditation Cooperation. This official recognition was given by the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) MRA for the accreditation of calibration and testing…
It was difficult for us as Working Group 9.01 ‘Processes of International Cooperation’ to say goodbye to Susanne Wendt at the end of March. Susanne started in 2013 as project coordinator for Mexico in the Latin America and the Caribbean Working Group and for a regional project on quality infrastructure for biodiversity and climate change…
In November 2022, an exciting new PTB international cooperation project, Quality Standards for Increased Trade in the Eastern Partnership Countries, was launched. The virtual kick-off event was attended by 97 participants from across Europe and the South Caucasus. Corinna Weigelt, Head of PTB’s Europe and the CIS Section, opened the new project’s high-energy kick-off event.…
End of a twelve-year collaboration with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Closing workshop in Kathmandu, 11-12 October 2022 “Support to SAARC in strengthening regional integration and cooperation in the field of quality infrastructure” – it was under this title that PTB, representing the BMZ, has collaborated with the South Asian Association for Regional…
The increasing availability of Covid-19 vaccines was an encouraging breakthrough in 2021 that turned a lot of things around. However, the pandemic is not over, and many of the challenges we encountered in 2020 remained. With a few exceptions, most of PTB’s International Cooperation activities therefore still took place in a virtual setting, and working…
We will remember this unusual year long into the future. As we all know, there have been and still are many sad, difficult and challenging events. Still, we will remember other aspects too: unrelenting willingness to help, solidarity and the speed at which we learned to work digitally. For us at the International Cooperation department,…
Andrea Ulbrich began her secondment to the trade department of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on 1 November 2020. This project coordinator with many years of experience in the Asia Section is following in the footsteps of Daniel Böhme. We would like to take the opportunity here to thank him for…
Our dear colleague Paul Michael Date is now retiring. We wish him all the best for the future and would also like to express our sincere gratitude to him. For over ten years we have worked with Paul in his capacity as the Head of Scientific Metrology of the Ghana Standards Authority, and we continue…
On 3 July in Ghent, Belgium, our esteemed colleague Philippe Dengler passed away following a severe illness. For many years, Philippe Dengler supported our work in North and sub-Saharan Africa as well as in Southeast Asia as an expert working intermittently and on a short-term basis. Of German heritage and born in Nancy, France, he…
On 6 and 7 February, PTB and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) jointly welcomed representatives of the evaluation units of German development cooperation organizations in Braunschweig at the traditional annual meeting. Over 60 guests from governmental and non-governmental institutions participated in order to discuss the newest developments in evaluation work. Upon…