Academy of Science South Africa 2005/6 Annual Report

Programme 3ASSAfdomain – due for Report completion by the end of 2006.Holding a major international (double) symposium on evidence-based advice to government and thenation – Proceedings to be published later in 2006.Setting up ASSAf’s first topical/area “Board” (in our case called a “Committee”) to oversee a broadstudy of selected topics in the use of science to alleviate poverty in South Africa.Recruiting a team of ASSAf staffers with clear job descriptions, training plans and potential fordevelopment as “academy-type professionals”.Production of a major national report on research publishing in South Africa, with strong and feasiblerecommendations for improving the nation’s capacity for and contribution to high-quality scholarshipand research.Monitoring and Evaluation of the USNA-ASSAf partnership projectThe Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)and the United States National Academy of Science (USNA) signed in 2005 specified that ASSAf andUSNA would participate in both a five-year and a ten-year independent, external evaluation of the USNAfundedproject and commit to the collection and management of data necessary for the evaluation.The first Annual International Conference of the African Science Academy Development Initiative(ASADI) was held from 7 to 10 November 2005 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. At thelearning collaborative part of this meeting, African Academies were introduced to monitoring andevaluation processes through presentations and discussions by external, independent monitoringand evaluation experts, Donna Podems and Natasha Nel. They gave a presentation on monitoring andevaluation, which included a brief introduction, discussion on monitoring and evaluation terms, groupdiscussions, plenary reflection and a post-training feedback survey. At the same meeting it was agreedthat the appointed independent monitoring and evaluation team (Evaluation Team) would visit eachindividual Academy early in 2006 to collect baseline data from their identified stakeholders.Annual Report 2005/0657