A CAPE develops strong links with a particular Asia-Pacific region, facilitating collaboration between tertiary institutions and other stakeholders to support language development, research and knowledge of that region, and to strengthen networks and relationships. The CAPE acts as a first port of call for people – students, academics and businesses both in New Zealand and in the target countries – looking for information, research or education related to the region.

Preparing New Zealand to ‘do business’ 

Our economic future success is increasingly connected to the Asia-Pacific region, which includes 11 of our top 20 trading partners. CAPEs help to ensure that New Zealand is better prepared to ‘do business’ with the region, including both goods and services trade.

New Zealand is a progressively more diverse society, so a greater understanding of the Asia-Pacific region also has positive impacts domestically.

CAPEs facilitate the provision of, and access to, education and training relevant to the Asia-Pacific region for a range of learners:

• current full- or part-time students
• those already in the workforce
• people looking for additional training.

This includes language qualifications to support New Zealand exporters and government agencies operating overseas.

Supporting key government strategies 

The CAPEs were designed to support the following government strategies:

• the Building Export Markets stream of the Business Growth Agenda
• Goal 3 of the Leadership Statement for International Education
• the Tertiary Education Strategy
• NZ Inc strategies for China led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the numerous trade agreements with Asia-Pacific countries.