Africa Leadership Training and Capacity Building Program: Quarterly Report for January – March 2013 (Tenth Quarter of Project Implementation)

As of a September 30, 2012 contract modification, the Program was extended for one year (through September 2013) and the ceiling was raised by $4,850,000 to $26,182,381. Africa Lead is being implemented by lead RAISE Plus IQC holder, DAI, supported by Management Systems International (MSI), Winrock International, Training Resources Group (TRG), ECI Africa Consulting (Pty) Ltd., and Michigan State University (MSU). The purpose of the program is to support the capacity building program of the US Government's Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative, which aligns U.S. Government development assistance with Africa-owned agriculture development plans that are, in turn, aligned with the African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP). CAADP seeks to contribute to the MDG goals by ensuring that governments throughout the continent apply 10% of their public budgets to agriculture in an effort to achieve the 6% annual growth in agricultural productivity that is needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the continent. Africa Lead provides leadership training, capacity assessments, logistical support for training and innovative short courses and internships/twinning arrangements prioritized in consultation with missions and partner countries and institutions, and a database of training offerings on the continent that can be matched to the leadership training and capacity building needs. The program is being implemented through regional offices in Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya; and Pretoria, South Africa, with the Nairobi office now designated as the Africa Lead East and Southern Africa (ESA) office. Program implementation and operations in the Nairobi and Accra offices are supported by a Bethesda-based office headed by the program Chief of Party (COP). The program's activities are focused on four main tasks: provision of leadership training to African food security leaders, support for short courses, workshops, conferences, and partnerships on innovative learning experiences, conduct of institutional capacity needs assessments to guide further training and capacity building, and designing, building, populating, validating, and institutionalizing a database of training offerings from African institutions. At the continental level, the program is working to develop a 5-day leadership training workshop and an intensified 4-day leadership training workshop for food security champions. The program is also supporting short courses, workshops, conferences, and partnerships on innovative learning experiences, including building and developing training partnerships with specialized institutions and supporting logistics and follow-up with participants attending short courses around the world. In the East and Southern Africa region, the program is providing customized blended Module 1&2 courses on leadership and rapid results, as well as supporting short courses, workshops, conferences, and partnerships on innovative learning experiences, including agribusiness leadership programs and customized training courses for regional organizations. The program's performance monitoring framework includes the development of data collection forms/instruments and the tracking of indicators to measure progress towards the program's goals and objectives. The program is also conducting lessons learned research to identify best practices and areas for improvement. The program's results framework includes a set of indicators that track progress towards the program's goals and objectives, including the number of African food security leaders trained, the number of short courses, workshops, conferences, and partnerships supported, and the number of institutional capacity needs assessments conducted. The program's indicator tracking sheet provides a detailed breakdown of the indicators and the data collection forms/instruments used to track progress.