Conferences and expos

CTICC lands another major conference

17 December 2008

The Cape Town International Convention Centre will host the Sixth World Congress of Education International in July 2011. One thousand delegates, from unions representing 30-million teachers around the world, will be in attendance.

The congress, held every four years by Brussels-based Education International, was last held in Berlin in 2007. The global union federation of organisations representing teachers and other education workers has 401 members in 172 countries and territories.

Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) managing director Dirk Elzinga said that winning such bids "has done more than any other factor to put Cape Town on the international map.

Putting Cape Town on the global map

"Congresses like the Education International bring a small but prestigious group of people to our shores, and for most of them it is the first time they have set foot in Africa," Elzinga said in a statement last week.

"The Mother City's natural beauty strikes a chord with everyone who comes here, and the world-class amenities at the CTICC match, or better, those international standards they are accustomed to elsewhere."

The new win brings CTICC's portfolio of international congresses booked for the next eight years, through to 2016, to 136. In recent weeks, the CTICC has won a number of big bids, including:

The Society of Incentives and Travel Executives (SITE) Conference (2010)
The Youth Nuclear Congress (2010)
The triennial International Congress on Hyperbaric Medicine (2011)
The 62nd International Astronautical Congress (2011)
The 8th International Aquarium Congress (2012)
The UNI-Global Union Congress (2014)

Education International in Africa

Petra Gwyn-Jone of Education International (EI) said the organisation's board had unanimously agreed on the choice of Cape Town and the CTICC for the Sixth World Congress in 2011. She said the organising team would visit Cape Town in February 2009 to firm up their specification.

In Africa, EI's affiliated member organisations function in difficult conditions and environments, and in countries which account for the bulk of out-of-school children.

EI represents 111 affiliates in 50 African countries, from Algeria in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Sierra Leone in the west to Mauritius in the east.

EI works on two current problems that are confronting the continent as a whole: the realisation of the UN Millennium Development Goal of education for all, and the halting of the HIV/Aids pandemic.

SAinfo reporter