pct27

=Africa RISING PCT meeting #27= 14 February 2018 Skype

__Participants__: Bernard Vanlauwe (BV) - chair (delegated by Siboniso Moyo) Peter Thorne (PT) Carlo Azzarri (CA) Jerry Glover (JG) Ewen Le Borgne (ELB) - notes

//Excused// Siboniso Moyo Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon

PCT page PCT follow-up action points


 * Agenda**
 * 1) Update on the overall situation
 * 2) Africa RISING Phase I summary document
 * 3) Payment of (IITA) services for the summary document
 * 4) Expectations and ToR for a function of program-wide communication officer
 * 5) Program-wide learning event
 * 6) AOB

__**Conversation**__

Update on the overall situation
See notes by email.

Africa RISING Phase I summary document
//Summary:// The next version will come back to us via the consultants on 19 February. We aim to send our feedback **by 22 February**. Then the document will go to final layouts and editing with GreenInk and ILRI (to safeguard the Feed the Future branding guidelines etc.).

Conversation: Everyone has contributed to this document to a greater or lesser extent. The latest version of the summary document was sent back to us after collecting your comments, then sent back to the consultants (GreenInk) with our comments and some updates. We now expect their next version of the document by 19 February. That should be a first 'final draf't laid out copy. We (AR comms team) will share that version with PCT team members and chief scientists and hope to get their feedback by 21 Feb. The final document is expected to come out by mid-March. Jerry’s foreword is still expected on this.

Then comes the topic of the promotion of this document. Very initial ideas for promotion include: a generic blog post on the Africa RISING website, interviews from chief scientists and Jerry, Tweets, sub-blog posts on different areas/chapters of the book; and finally piggybacking on another important Ag event in March/April/May.

Bernard suggested adding comments from partners and anyone who was not involved in the Africa RISING research directly too.


 * ACTION: JG to provide foreword for the document asap**
 * ACTION: Comms team to share final version from GreenInk for feedback with PCT members and chief scientists, by 19 February**
 * ACTION: PCT members and chief scientists to provide __final__ feedback on the document by 22 February**

IITA payment for services around the Summary document
//Summary: The first payment has taken very long to be processed but should be processed now and Ewen will get a confirmation when the payment is effectively on its way. In the future - and until a program comms coordinator is hired - Ewen mentioned that he and ILRI are exploring having someone else coordinate AR program communications.//

Conversation: Jonathan Odhong has been coordinating the technical work around the Phase I summary document and has put quite some time into this. It was agreed in a previous PCT meeting that that work would be financially supported and a first invoice was submitted by IITA to ILRI for this work, in the last quarter of 2017. To date, this first invoice still has not been paid. This frustrating process seems to be almost complete, however, with latest information mentioning that despite the invoice would be processed and Ewen should be notified as soon as the payment leaves the ILRI account to reach IITA's. In the light of this issue and other frustrating administrative issues, Ewen has been in touch with his ILRI former coordinator Shirley Tarawali to consider delegating the coordination of Africa RISING program communication to someone else (possibly Simret and with final approvals by Boni). Eventually, the program communication person to be hired whenever possible should be covering these responsibilities. Hopefully the second payment for IITA's services by Jonathan will be handled much more smoothly.

Expectations and ToR for a function of program-wide communication officer
//Summary: This position is changing a bit with respect to the internal changes related to ILRI communication. The question of where to host the position is up. IITA would like to host this position. There are pros and cons for this solution, although in any case a few PCT members have mentioned that the idea of hosting that position in Ibadan - in a country where no Africa RISING activity is taking place - may not seem logical.//

Conversation: The background information about this is that we made an offer to someone to join in that position and that wasn’t possible due to budget constraints. Irmgard and Peter discussed and agreed that the nature of the function changed a bit. It's not a great deal of change on the terms of reference. See the outline shared by Irmgard and some changes on the idea of creative communications. With Peter Ballantyne moving on and changes in ILRI CKM this is becoming a more pressing issue. Irmgard made the point that this function might be sitting at IITA better than at ILRI. Irmgard mentioned situating this function in Ibadan but Peter felt less comfortable with that option (question mark about the connectivity and proximity of AR countries and sites etc.). Bernard suggests having another chat on this at the next PCT with Irmgard & Peter (in Arusha) and linking up with Ewen on this. Carlo also mentioned that it seems a little weird to locate program communications in a place where there’s no program activity.


 * ACTION:** **Carlo, Irmgard and Peter to move forward with a more concrete proposal for this position (ToR, dates of recruitment, posting location etc.) and to involve Ewen for a communication perspective**.

Program-wide learning event
//Summary: The same team needs to kick this back for discussion. We need to get moving rather quickly and the general idea is to mainstream elements of Phase I into Phase II.//

Conversation: With the unclear budget issue, the original proposal was to hold a program-wide learning event in September-October and we felt that the focus would be on how phase I lessons were mainstreamed into Phase II. Lieven and Mateete have been working on a white paper for ESA to consider adoption studies and ways in which SI innovations were taken up etc. and that might be an interesting track to explore. There is quite a bit of information on the table and if we need to do this in September-October we need to get going with this. There were also ideas shared about this in PCT 26.


 * ACTION: Peter, Carlo and Irmgard can come up with a more concrete proposal on this in Arusha and involve Ewen from a process design perspective**.

AOB
Conversation
 * Q: Is anyone looking into the information on the wikis?
 * A: Yes ILRI Comms is looking into archiving these wikis and finding a way to keep on collaborating around other activities and outputs as we have been doing on wikis so far. Bernhard Hack (ILRI) is taking the lead on this and Peter T and Ewen can periodically fill in PCT members on progress with this.