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Future actions of AAAE
My vision is one of
a dynamic and vibrant Association, supporting capacity building activities
of members, with expanded opportunities for young scientists, and
contributing significantly to policy research and development on African
agriculture. The executive committee will work to make the AAAE a
world-class professional association - and one that is relevant in
spearheading major development issues that affect agriculture in Africa.
There is real need
for a professional association such as ours with credible intellectual
voice to inform and guide national and regional agricultural development
issues. We must be relevant to the development issues of the day. We
should strive to become the ‘go-to’ organization when it comes to issues
of African agricultural development. A platform wherein governments,
farmers, development organizations, research bodies turn to for
evidence-based guidance on how to rapidly transform the agricultural
sectors of Africa and achieve broad-based agricultural and rural economic
growth and development.
Ours is an
association of academicians. That is not enough for success. The challenge
today is not ourselves, but how others view us and how relevant we are. We
must be relevant; and to be relevant, we need to broaden and become
inclusive. We need to reach out to the rest of the stakeholders in the
agricultural and business sectors to build a broad coalition for
mobilizing support for agriculture, and providing the best policies and
institutional options for achieving and sustaining agricultural growth. We
must build partnerships. We must let others know more about us by
investing in communications.
The new Executive
will work in an expansive way to position the association as a lead group
for the agricultural development sphere in Africa. We will work hard to
make AAAE the recognized association of excellence and the first point of
call for guiding agricultural development on the continent. This will
require that we become relevant at the national, regional and
international levels, and that we be able to effectively engage and
communicate on best practices for development. We will build and
strengthen national associations of agricultural economists, encourage our
members to become the leading focal points on national agricultural policy
issues and develop new ways of engaging with NEPAD/CAADP, Regional
Economic Communities and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, to
inform the development of new and transformative regional agricultural
policy frameworks.
We will work to
broaden our memberships to mainstream the public and private sector. We
will expand our membership and develop new innovative and strategic ways
of engaging with and including the private sector (especially in finance,
agribusiness and insurance and other service sectors) in our association.
We need to broaden our financial support base to include a significant
share from the private sector and establish an Endowment for the
Association.
We will work to
strengthen our departments of agricultural and applied economics, expand
opportunities for high-quality training, identify, support and promote
young professionals, provide new tools to our members to re-build their
toolkits for engaging on cutting-edge research, and raise the quality of
journal submissions for our association’s journal as well as contributions
by our members into the International Association of Agricultural and
Applied Economists and other leading journals.
Finally, we will
develop and strengthen linkages with other associations, especially the
International Association of Agricultural Economists, the European
Association of Agricultural Economics, the Asian Association of
Agricultural Economics and the American Association of Agricultural
Economics, among others. We will work to ensure that all of our members
participate and have opportunities to enhance their professional
capacities. And we will work to recognize, celebrate and enhance our
linguistic diversity across Africa. Our diversity is our strength.
We will develop a
compelling collective vision. The vision will be discussed, expanded and
shaped in consultation with our esteemed members. It is your association
and your participation, involvement, ownership and support are crucial for
the success of our collective efforts. As the Executive Committee, we
count on your support and active participation in the activities of the
Association. Together, we will succeed in the exciting years ahead.
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