Annual Report 2012 - African Agricultural Technology Foundation

16 AATF Annual Report 2012
Activities for the year were mainly influenced by the strategy refresh
exercise carried out in May 2012, following which management was tasked
with implementation and I am happy to report that good progress has
been made.
One of the landmark achievements for the year was the adoption
of the AATF Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, Improvement and Alignment
(AMELIA) system that will support the Foundation to realise impact
driven and results based management that will help demonstrate our work
to stakeholders. The system will help track progress and results and also
serve as a planning tool thus ensuring effective and efficient utilisation
of staff time. It is proving to be a very useful system and I am certain that
it will impact overall approach to planning, monitoring and evaluation.
Ensuring a balance of staff skills and well trained employees is critical
to realisation of our mandate that runs across the full value chain from
negotiation of technologies, production and delivery of products to farmers.
We therefore commenced recruitment of high calibre staff to support
deployment and commercialisation of our products. The new staff will
join AATF in 2013. This will help us realise a balanced staff of technical,
commercial and administrative talent. In addition, we continued capacity
strengthening efforts for staff and partners through subject specific trainings
and workshops to ensure that we have the necessary skills to carry out our
work – details of these are in the project reports. We also undertook internal
staff team building activities to enhance cohesion and cooperation and I am
happy to report that we closed the year with a more focused, productive
and united team that will deliver on the organisation’s goals.
Partnership development
Partnerships are at the heart of AATF operations. As recommended
by stakeholders during the strategy refresh, we undertook to not only
widen our partnerships and collaborations but to also add value to these
partnerships through structuring real action and result based arrangements.
In this regard therefore, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
the African Union Commission that will see mainstreaming of AATF work
into the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme
process and another with the African Seed Traders Association that will
support the uptake and distribution of seed from AATF projects. We also
reviewed and signed new agreements with the Forum for Agricultural
Research in Africa and the Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain Pour La
Recherche et le Developpement Agricoles that will provide for impactful
relationships.
Deploying agricultural technologies for farmers