PROGRESS REPORT

102 PROGRESS REPORT OPERATIONAL SUMMARY 103
Gender Composition
Following guidelines provided to all government
organizations, the ATA pridesitself on creating a
working environment that welcomes diversity of
all types. In addition to the hybrid staffing model
detailed above, the ATA follows government
guidelines to ensure there is no discrimination
among job seekers and civil servants due to
ethnic origin, sex, religion, political outlook,
disability, HIV/AIDS or any other grounds.
One particular metric that the ATA tracks
extremely closely is the Agency’s ability toattract
and retain high-caliber women into positions
across the organization. More specifically, the
ATA’s Senior Management Team has established
an internal target of having women account for at
least 30% of all positions across the organization.
While an ideal target would be to have 50% of
all positions filled by women, this would not be
a realistic one given the factthat historically, the
sheer number of women professionals working in
the agriculture sector is far less than men. While
this trend has been changing in recent years,
finding qualified women to fill senior roles in the
agriculture sector in Ethiopia is still very difficult.
When evaluated at the macro level, it appears
that the ATA has fallen slightly short of meeting
its 30% female target during most years. As of
July 2015, women accounted for 25% of all staff.
However, a more granular breakdown of gender
composition by different staffing areas reveals
some interesting insights.
One perspective for looking at the gender balance
within the ATA is to analyze the composition of
the staff at the five organizational staffing levels:
1) Senior Management; 2) Program/Project
Leadership; 3) Senior Experts; 4) Mid-level/Junior
Experts; and 5) Operational Support Staff.
When broken down this way, it can be observed
that the percentage of women in the ATA’sSenior
Management Team has increased from0% in
the first full year of operation to 40% by2015.
Unfortunately, the percentage of womenin
Program/Project Leadership positions has
decreased from 23% in 2012 to only 9% in 2015.
A similar trend is also seen in the area of Senior
Experts where women accounted for 25% in
2012 but only 13% in 2015. While some of this
decrease could be credited to the difficulty in
finding highly qualified women for the increasing
number of senior positions available as the ATA
has grown, more effort must still be made to
identify and attract high-caliber women to these
roles.
On the positive side, women have accounted for
at least 30% of Mid-level/Junior Experts since
the ATA’s founding and accounted for nearly
40% of all such positions in 2015. In the areas
of Operational Support Staff, women accounted
for 32% of these positions in 2015, and have
represented at least 25% of such positions since
the Agency’s inception.
Financial Report
The ATA’s expenditures over the past four years
must be viewed within the context of the
overall growth and evolution pattern of any new
organization.
Since the concept of a “Transformation Agency”
was relatively new in Ethiopia, the GTP I period
was one of intensive learning about how the ATA
could best engage with partners and leverage
new and existing resources to achieve its
mandate of catalyzing and supporting agricultural
transformation.
In the following sections, a review of the ATA’s
financial expenses over the past four years is
provided by: 1) type of expenditures; and 2)
source of expenditures.
Analysis of Expenditure by Type
Overall, the ATA’s total expenditures over the four
years the organization was operational during
GTP I amounted to approximately $44.9 million
USD. Significant budget increases were seen
year-by-year as the ATA gained encouragement
from the government to engage in increased
activities, and confidence grew among
development partners to further finance these
activities. As such, the ATA’s annual budget
increased from $3 million USD in 2004 E.C.
(2011/12) to $18 million USD in 2007 E.C.
(2014/15), an increase of more than 500%.
Program Activities
Expenses related to program activities have
increased as a percentage of the overall budget,
from 72.1% in the first year of the ATA’s activities
to over 86% in 2007 E.C (2014/15). In the GTP II
period, program activities are expected to account
for at least 85% of the overall budget.
When the ATA began program operations in
2004 E.C. (2011/12), the approach to catalyze
agricultural transformation was based on a
broad collaboration between the ATA and the
Ministry of Agriculture on a select number of
transformational interventions where the ATA
primarily played a capacity building and support
role. Based on the feedback received from the
MoA and various other stakeholders, in 2005 E.C
(2012/13) the Agricultural Transformation Council
asked the ATA to jointly own and execute some of
the deliverables in the Transformation Agenda. In
parallel, the ATA has developed a more robust and
structured approach to providing strategy
and analytical support to partners in the
Transformation Agenda.
The ATA has thus evolved to play three distinct
roles in the implementation of prioritized
deliverables in the Agricultural Transformation
Agenda. These are:
• Provide Implementation Support (problem
solving, coordination and capacity building
support) to partners who are executing the
majority of deliverables in the Transformation
Agenda.
• Jointly own and execute specific deliverables
within the Transformation Agenda.
• Undertake analytical and strategy related
studies based on the request of senior policy
makers.
Percentage of Female Staff by Staffing Level
18
Total expenses
G.C.
E.C.
30%
0%
23%
25%
July 2012
Sene 2004
37%
38%
20%
17% 17%
12%
July 2013
Sene 2005
35%
27%
Overall Senior Management Team Leadership Team Senior Experts Junior Experts Operation
25%
40%
13%
16%
July 2014
Sene 2006
31%
26%
25%
40%
9%
13%
July 2015
Sene 2007
39%
32%
Target 30%
In Million
USD $$
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
Program expenses
2
Operational expenses
0
E.C. 2004
2005
2006
2007
G.C. 2011/12
2012/13
2013/14
2014/15
The ATA’s budget across these three areas of
program activities also reflects the realities of the
funding modalities most commonly available to
the ATA from development partners. During
GTP I, many partners typically preferred to finance
deliverables (projects) that the ATA jointly owns,
rather than provide the ATA with core funding
which is necessary to support more systemic
solutions through a problem solving and capacity
building modality.
Field Drivers and Soil Surveyors, which are exclusively filled by men for security reasons, are excluded from the calculation of the Operations and Mid-level/
Junior Expert positions.