The Commonwealth Executive MBA/MPA has been offered since mid-2002 through four premier South Asian open universities: Bangladesh Open University (BOU), Indira Gandhi National Open University, (IGNOU, India), Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL), and Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU, Pakistan), although the last, AIOU, began offering courses in early 2003. The CEMBA/CEMPA was designed, developed and implemented as a result of collaboration between the four universities and writers from universities in Commonwealth countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This was brokered by COL with funding assistance from the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC).

The CEMBA/CEMPA program provides an opportunity to acquire both accreditation and valuable training for candidates who are resident of a participating country, possess any sort of undergraduate degree (or have worked in a related field for at least two years) and can pass a test of professional experience and English fluency. Projections for the CEMBA/CEMPA promise a significant short- and long-term human and economic development pay-off for the South Asian Commonwealth region.