ASA Meeting November 2006 Dar es Salaam
Executive Summary
This ten-year Strategic Plan defines the activities of the ARPPIS Scholars Association (ASA) for the period 2007-2016. The Plan emphasises strategies that would enable ASA to develop a high profile scientific programme while promoting the professional development of ASA’s members. The planning process involved intensive consultations with key ASA members in order to build consensus key issues and the strategy.
ASA was established in 1998 as a network of graduates of the African Regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science (ARPPIS). ARPPIS is a joint regional training programme of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and more than 20 African universities. Other members of ASA include non-ARPPIS scientists as well as institutions that ascribe to the application of insect pests and vector management technologies to the realisation of Africa’s millennium development goals (MDGs).
Since its formation the association has enrolled more than 300 members who are working in various capacities within Africa and abroad. The association is organised as a network, with its regional secretariat hosted at ICIPE. It has provisions for regional chapters in five sub-regions of Africa, as well as Country Chapters. Significant achievements of ASA include its successful participation in institutional strengthening programmes of ICIPE, which have significantly assisted in the retention of ARPPIS graduates in the continent, thereby addressing Africa’s brain drain.
ASA’s vision is to be an active and respected pan-African network of like-minded scientists and institutions collaborating in the application of science to alleviate hunger, poverty and disease for a better Africa. Its mission is to alleviate hunger, poverty and disease in Africa through scientific management of arthropod pests of staple food crops and vectors of major human and animal diseases by pursuing collaborative approaches that maximise resource utilisation.
A major constraint of ASA has been scarcity of resources for implementing its programmes, while its key strength lies in the ever-expanding network of insect scientists graduating from ARPPIS and similar programmes and working in various parts of Africa, who provide excellent opportunities for networking and collaboration. Strategic situation analysis reveals favourable opportunities regionally and internationally, which ASA can exploit to better its position. All things considered, the analysis identifies six key challenges which constitute the focus of this Strategic Plan.
These are:
- how to develop and strengthen individual members’ commitment to the association,
- how to design and implement competitive, impact oriented and demand driven scientific projects,
- how to establish strong and working partnerships and linkages,
- how to enhance visibility of ASA’s programmes within and outside Africa,
- how to work with ICIPE in a mutually beneficial way, and
- how to re-engineer ASA’s management systems to make them more efficient and ensure effective communication.