An hour ago Zlatan Ibrahimovic announced his new club, Manchester United. 


Ibra will join Jose Mourinhos new team to reclaim the Premier League title. And what a derby it will be towards Pep Guardiolas Man City! 


This has been a well kept secret. Now it is official. This will be a great season. 

Ibra arrives to England to conquer a new country, a new league, a new club, new titles. 

British media writes tonight: “He is the largest, global superstar that United have ever recruited”. 

Ibra is home. Manchester United is back. 

I have been working with capacity building for a long time. I have also worked in many countries over the years. 

You learn a lot from meeting people all around the world and from every day facing new challenges, developing new solutions and addressing new problems that needs to be solved.

Sometimes I feel like The Fixer. A global expert on Customs, borders, security and trade – ready to do my part making the world a better place. I am somebody that can give advise based on long international experience on how to handle movement of people and gods though the world in the most effecient way. 

However, capacity building is not about dropping from the sky in a parachute like a ‘superman’. That doesn’t work when we do capacity building. 

Instead it is about learning as much as possible about the environment you are worklng in and try to transfer relevant experiences and best practices from all around the world, together with local experitise, adjust the models to local circumstances and creating something new based on knowledge. 
I have many colleagues and friends that contributes and do their best to make our profession, our part of the world, better. We know that with globalization people trade more and move more. This is good. 

From history we have learned that when we know each other better and when we trade more the risks of conflicts decreases. We need a more friendly world in the future, that is sure. If I and my colleagues can donour little clntribution to that vision, then I am happy with my life. 

Sweden is one of the largest donors in the world. UN recommends that all developed countries should grant 0.7% of their GDP in aid to the least developed countries. 


Sweden is one of the few countries that currently meet the target. Last year Sweden donated 1.21% of our GDP, the higest number in the world. This has been the case during the past decade.


Sweden supports more than 100 countries around the world on regular basis. It is the Swedish Minstry of Foreign Affairs that develops the strategies and policies for the Swedish aid sector. The operational part of the aid sector is handled by a specific agency, the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA). 


SIDA is one of the leading development agenices in the world. The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and SIDA have been two of the largest donors to the World Customs Organization and the World Trade Organization the last ten years. 


Africa is one of the continents prioritized by Sweden. We have had a specific strategy for the aid to Africa the last 2010-2015. This strategy has now been evaluated and a new strategy is in place.

One of major points int eh work with the new strategy has been to instruct SIDA to work with multiple partners on both political and technical issues. 

Swedish aid is primarily concentrated on capacity building. However in the previous strategy a larger focus was directed towards support for regional organizations, particularly the African Union, AU, and a number of regional economic communities (RECs). The new strategy will be more flexible inbthis respect. 

“We need to have a little more flexibility, so that we take the opportunity when we see an opening” says the spokesperson from MinFor in a comment. Swedens’ regional aid for Africa is approx. 4.2 billion for 2016. 


In addition to the regional aid Sweden also has bilateral development cooperation with 15 individual African countries. The purpose of the new strategy is to further develop the cooperation and increase the support to African countries.