Africa RISING PCT meeting #29[edit | edit source]

10 April 2018 Skype

Participants: Siboniso Moyo (SM) - chair Carlo Azzarri (CA) Jerry Glover (JG) Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon (IHZ) Peter Thorne (PT) Bernard Vanlauwe (BV) Jonathan Odhong (JO) - secretary

PCT page PCT follow-up action points

Agenda

Status of the overall situation
Update on Phase I summary document
Update on the program communications position
Update on the reorganization of the M&E component of the program
Post Arusha meeting (progress)
Plans for the annual learning event
Upcoming events
AOB

Conversation Chair (SM) thanked ELB for his great work with the PCT and also took time to welcome JO into the PCT.

Status of the overall situation Summary:

Conversation: Update from JG: Congress has approved funding for congressional notification. There is nothing to hold back activities going forward. There is still a congressional notification approval needed for USAID to use World Bank trust funds for the CGIAR. This is still going through approval that will take about three weeks more. No opposition to it and it’s just an approval process that is ongoing. JG expecting a budget for Africa RISING program (with 5 line items) from PT, IHZ, and CA. Figures for the five line items should be accompanied by their corresponding justifications.

ACTION: Skype between PT,IHZ and CA to finalize and send the final budget to JG by CoB 13 April.

Africa RISING Phase I summary document Summary: All PCT members and Chief Scientists had provided feedback/ corrections to be made on the laid out document version circulated by ELB on 21 March. A majority of the comments have already been sent to Green Ink for revision. Some of the comments however required consultation with scientists who did the research work (verification) and this has been done and sent to Green Ink. A revised version of the document, is expected to be sent back in by end of the week and promptly circulated for the last time to members of the PCT. After this document should be ready for print (approx. 950 copies).

Conversation

ACTION: JO to circulate Phase 1 summary document to PCT members by Friday 13 April for final review.

ACTION: PCT members to review Phase 1 summary document for the final time and send feedback to JO by CoB 17 April.

Update on the program communications position

Summary: SM gave an update from the mini PCT meeting held in Arusha on 14 March. Members present at the meeting had discussed and resolved that JO takes over the program communications role. Other changes agreed upon are that IITA will recruit replacements for JO in ESA and WA. These changes necessitated some program budgetary allocation revision that PT and IHZ were assigned to work out.

Conversation PT and IHZ confirmed that the ToR for the program communications role had been revised. Further to this IHZ updated the group that IITA human resources had been notified and were in the process of preparing a new contract reflecting the new ToR for JO.

Reorganization of the M&E component of the program

Summary: SM noted that this change was also part of the decisions made by members at the mini PCT meeting in Arusha on 14 March. After discussions examining the prevailing challenges with data collection, upload and M&E within the projects and program; members expressed the need for embedded M&E/ data management specialists within the 3 regional AR projects to address the existing challenges. During the meeting, CA, IHZ, and PT were also tasked with preparing ToR for the position and revising the program M&E budget to reflect the changes. A draft ToR for the positions has been prepared, but not yet shared with other PCT members. Discussions are still ongoing with regards to the budget.

Conversation JG: Is the term M&E specialist correct and accurate or are they data management specialist? IHZ & PT: Per the ToR we have drafted, the incumbent will handle both roles.

ACTION: CA to circulate the latest version of the draft ToR for the positions to other PCT members for comment. ACTION: Discussions on budget allocation to be finalized by CA,IHZ and PT.

Post Arusha meeting (progress) Summary: BV requested an update of the outcomes from the joint learning event between SIIL, SIMLESA and Africa RISING on 13 – 15 March.

Conversation Since nearly all PCT members took part in the event, he requested a link to the event wiki page to be shared with him.

ACTION:JO to share link to the wiki event page with BV and some bullet points of outputs from the meeting.

Plans for the annual learning event Summary: Africa RISING has in the past held a program-wide learning event. What are the plans this year?

Conversation PT and IHZ noted that no discussions had been held about a possible date. Members discussed and tentatively agreed to hold the event during the week 22 – 26 October 2018.

ACTION: PT, IHZ & JO to discuss finer details about location, topics/themes for the event, draft agenda. PCT to be briefed on progress periodically.

Upcoming events

Summary:

10 - 13 July: Workshop on the SI indicators in Accra, Ghana.
Africa RISING Ethiopia will hold a planning meeting [date not set]t.

> 24 – 27 April: Africa RISING ESA & WA program staff team retreat to discuss future directions for the two projects.

Planning meeting for Africa RISING West Africa [end of May 2018, date to be fixed].

Conversation IHZ: As we plan for these upcoming events, we need to find ways of including SIMLESA and SIIL considering this is a commitment we made during the recent joint learning event between the programs.

PT & SM: Yes, this is important, but we need to review the list of activities [as proposed at the joint learning event] and see what is feasible.

SM: Point raised by IHZ earlier about reviewing our list of action points from the previous meetings ( https://africa-rising.wikispaces.com/PCT_Actions) is well noted. We’ll work with JO to go down the list and table any pending issues for discussion at the next meeting [for which we’ll communicate the date too].

ACTION: SM & JO to have a follow-up Skype meeting to review list of action points from previous meetings. Members to be briefed on this at the next meeting.