ITEC: India's flagship capacity-building scheme has trained close to 400,000 officials of the Global South

Background

The ITEC scheme of the Ministry of External Affairs provides fully funded training opportunities at Indian training institutions for civilian, defence and paramilitary government professionals from Global South countries.
Courses are offered both on a multi-country basis and on a country-specific customised basis, and include special training packages such as Sagar Amrut for Pacific Island countries and the Quad infrastructure fellowship for Indo-Pacific countries.
Course offerings are differentiated into ITEC-Security for paramilitary officials, ITEC-Executive for senior officials and ITEC-Professionals for practising members of regulated professions.
Since its inception in 1964, the scheme is estimated to have trained close to 400,000 government officials from countries of the Global South.
The scheme currently offers about 12000 slots in almost 400 courses each year for civilian and paramilitary training, and around 3900 slots in over 100 courses each year at defence establishments.
Applications are made through Indian embassies and candidates must be nominated by their governments; the process is administered through a web-based portal.
The scheme is implemented by the DPA-II Division, which also deputes Indian experts abroad and sets up Centres of Excellence in IT.