The CAPEs focus on developing strong links with North Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America, facilitating collaboration between tertiary institutions and other stakeholders to support language development, research and knowledge of each region, and to strengthen networks and relationships.

The CAPEs deliver programmes, resources and initiatives that deepen New Zealanders’ knowledge and understanding and provide a platform for commercial, educational and cultural relationships with the economies of the Asia-Pacific.

Please note: The CAPEs initiative is coming to an end, with final reports to be provided to the Tertiary Education Commission in October 2024. There will be no further funding rounds for CAPEs. For background on the Budget 2023 decision, see: Budget 2023.

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
• business people.

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. 

Three CAPEs currently operate

Three CAPEs began operating on 1 July 2017:

• North Asia CAPE hosted by the University of Auckland
• South-East Asia CAPE hosted by Victoria University of Wellington
• Latin America CAPE hosted by Victoria University of Wellington.

A consortium was established to deliver on the purpose and policy objectives of all three CAPEs. The consortium includes the host universities (University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington) as well as the University of Otago and the University of Waikato. 

Impact Report

A CAPEs Impact Report assessed the collective impact of the three CAPEs from 2017 to 2022.

Measuring our Impact 2017–2022 (PDF 2MB) – Centres of Asia-Pacific Excellence

More information

If you have any questions please email CAPEs@tec.govt.nz or the TEC Customer Contact Group, customerservice@tec.govt.nz.