DG Announcements

Director’s Welcome – 2009

2009-01-23T10:50:00.003+01:00

Welcome to our website. Let me thank you first of all for keeping faith with CTA’s information site and thanks for newcomers’ interest in CTA’s work. The site is under reconstruction and will continue to be improved further.

Are the years getting shorter? The more we do the faster time passes by. As you can see from our 2008 executive summary report, we were rather busy and successful last year. Therefore, we have started 2009 in an excellent mood with plenty of energy – even though we have to get used to putting a 9 at the end of the date instead of an 8.

Why should the 2008 chant, “yes we can” not also apply for 2009? Last year CTA started its transition as set out in our Strategic Plan for 2007-2010. This will just continue in 2009. Any why shouldn’t this strategy to becoming more efficient and increasingly reaching more beneficiaries not continue way beyond 2010?

We have seen our budget grow by 37% in the past 2 years. This is very positive indeed. But it only partly compensates for ACP population growth and steadily growing general inflation rates. We certainly know that we are still far from being in a position to satisfy the important and increasing demand for agricultural information and capacity building by rural populations in ACP.

Today we have to be concerned about the impact of the global financial situation as there are some clouds shadowing the world’s economies. However, we are confident that we will achieve further budget increases by convincing funders through the quality of our products and our continuing advocacy.

We have already trimmed our structure – from four to three operational departments, and the new Executive Board is now in place to strengthen our voice towards our authorities. In 2009 we will fill new posts identified via our restructuring exercise.

Many new projects are on line this year and we urge you to book mark this page, put up the necessary RSS links, tab us, whatever… and please let us know what you think and what you’d like to see.

If you preferred chatting with me directly, please check out my blog. I am happy to receive your feedback this year please, because it is my last one with CTA.
I hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Hansjörg Neun
Director CTA
January 2009

Director's welcome

2008-05-28T14:45:00.001+02:00

Welcome to the website of CTA, the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.

We expected that this would be another exciting year for us and we have been spot on. The ups and downs of agriculture and climate change are really providing fascinating fodder for us in the field. The sharp increases in crude oil and petrol prices globally, food shortages and spiraling food prices coupled with the crises in China and Myanmar have made it clear that we need to go back to the drawing board – starting at A for agriculture.

One of the really exciting activities for CTA is the impact review of selected activities in 10 ACP countries. We are reaching into the field to see what is happening on the ground and getting feedback in order to improve our products and services. The review is extraordinary in that it is being managed as a joint operation and both ITAD consultants and CTA staff have responsibilities for making the initiative a success; we look forward to the results.

We have also continued to further our Web 2.0 agenda through improving the communication with our ACP partners via the ACP Embassies. Up to May 2008, we shared some insights on how to benefit best from web 2.0 technologies with IT-experts from Brussels-based ACP Embassies.

CTA’s 2007 Annual Report is available, both online and in paper version and I invite you to take a look at the new design, new reporting format and the new thematic focus. We hope it makes it even easier for you to understand all that we do at CTA.

Take a look at the revised website for Spore, the reports of the last Brussels Development meeting and bookmark the conference webpage for more news on CTA’s seminar on Climate Change and Agriculture in October this year.

We look forward to receiving your feedback, so please let us know what you think and what you’d like to see.

To chat with me directly, please “go out of the box” and check out my blog. I am very much enjoying the challenges related to maintaining this dialogue with you. Again, let me thank you for sharing your feedback with me (for those who still prefer E-mail please send it to “neun(at)cta.int”).

I hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Hansjörg Neun
Director CTA

June 2008

2008-02-07T10:58:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the website of CTA, the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.

Incredibly, 2008 has started like a rocket. This is another exciting year for us at CTA and we are really looking forward to moving ahead.

Last year we started to address the targets we set for ourselves in our Programme of Activities, which was based on our 2007-2010 Strategic plan. We’ve made a good start, now we have to keep up the momentum. One of our concerns last year was our budget and this year, we can see a return on our efforts as we have been granted the requested increase. In response to the important demands to satisfy our ACP target beneficiaries, we have already totally allocated it. This means that we have a lot of work to do in 2008.

Thematically, in 2008 we will continue focusing on some key challenges in addition to our basic themes: climate change, commercialization of our products and services and the impact of ICTs on agricultural practices within ACP, while still delving even deeper into Web 2.0 technologies.

This year we should see the administrative board taking up their work. Internally, we are looking to put into place a new and more streamlined structure which is more in keeping with the (relatively small) size of our organization. The new structure will certainly require additional expertise in order to reflect our intention of focusing on strengthening ICTs in ACP countries.

Have you noticed the difference in our website? I hope you realised that we have done some work on it: updating the information about the Centre, and adding new features, such as the Staff Directory, the Glossary and the list of Acronyms and Abbreviations. We also included pages for our partners and internship programmes and have totally revamped the Spore portal. Our new navigation pane should make it easier to find information on the site and you will also soon see a search engine that would further facilitate finding what you are looking for.

We have a lot more in store for you, and we look forward to receiving your feedback on what we have done, so please let us know what you think and what you’d like to see.

If you would like to chat with me directly, please “go out of the box” and check out my blog. I am very much enjoying the challenges related to maintaining this dialogue with you and again, I look forward to receiving your feedback.

I hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Hansjörg Neun
Director CTA

2007-07-11T11:02:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the website of CTA, the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.

Time is running and we are halfway through 2007. So far we have been working in earnest to achieve the targets we set for ourselves in our 2007-2010 Strategic Plan as well as in our 2007 Programme of Activities. One of our concerns this year is our budget. Whereas the demands on our products and services as well as travel and many other essential costs have been increasing, our real budget has actually decreased.

We have speeded up project planning and implementation and can see an improvement both regarding planned as well as actual expenditure during these first six months. And we have met several times with our ACP and EU supervisory authorities with the aim of securing additional funding for 2007 as well as increasing CTA ’s budget under the 10 th European Development Fund (EDF) to meet the needs of our target communities.

We keep working with our partners to achieve our goals; in this sense, we participated in some exciting and intellectually challenging meetings, such as the 4th FARA General Assembly from 10 to 16 June in Johannesburg, South Africa and the 2nd European Forum on Sustainable Rural Development from 18 to 21 June in Berlin, Germany. In keeping with our mandate to facilitate access to and share information, CTA has started a series of briefings on topics related to agricultural and rural development.

The ongoing work on our website to make it more informative and user-friendly is progressing well. Please feel free to browse through the site and learn more about our activities.

Looking towards the next half of the year, it is my pleasure to highlight CTA ’s role as the lead organizer of the Web2 for Development International Conference to be held in September at FAO HQ in Rome, Italy. Please check out the conference website and register online at http://www.web2fordev.net/registration.html. We are also investigating the options for remote participation.

If you would like to chat with me directly, please check out my blog. Blogging is a new experience for me and I realize that I have to go further to be more interactive with my readers. Please feel free to share your views on topics such as global warming, value chains and fantasy vs reality.

I hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for any suggestions you may have.

Dr. Hansjörg Neun
Director CTA

2006-12-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

Dear visitors,

Thank you for visiting CTA ’s website.

As we wrap up our activities for 2006, we can look back on a year of many accomplishments and some steps towards achieving the goals we set out in our 2006 plan of activities.

Finalising the external evaluation as well as several audits (since May 2005 five annual and one operational audit) led to some 220 recommendations. We have made significant progress on improving our efficiency and visibility:

Introduction of a one-page project profile with the aim of: i) improving project planning, project quality and coherence, ii) saving time iii) building up a data base on CTA activities per country, per sector etc.;
Harmonization and streamlining of CTA’s contract management system;
Analysis of weaknesses in the project management cycle (why did CTA only spend 90 % of its operational budget in the past?); this led to the following changes:

sending out signed contracts (saving 4 – 6 weeks per contract),
starting commitments earlier in a budget year / no commitments towards the end;

Systematically informing National Authorising Officers (NAOs), EC-Delegations about CTA activities in a given country and inviting them to participate in CTA -organised events;
CTA is about to develop a new staff evaluation system (form & procedure) and in the process of introducing a time management system;
CTA has started addressing training needs through internal seminars;
CTA rules have changed (an administrative board will replace the advisory committee and staff can be offered permanent contracts).

In 2006 we had to say goodbye to some colleagues who have decided to take a different route and we have welcomed some new colleagues, who have come on board and are helping us in our ongoing endeavours.

A major exercise was the preparation of the CTA ’s Strategic Plan 2007 – 2010 whose main aim is to increase outreach through economies of scale and a more business-oriented approach. The potential is enormous as we have to respond to a huge demand from the more than 500 million potential beneficiaries who live in the rural areas of the 79 ACP countries covered by our mandate.

To enable a real turnaround, our vision is that our supervisory structures will increase CTA ’s operational budget to match the felt needs. Also CTA needs to invest more in Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).

One of the new tools is my new blog http://neun.cta.int. The blog will enable us to talk about issues and topics related to CTA, development as a whole (The END of POVERTY?) and on topics beyond (Making People HAPPY?) - a space where we can communicate. Please let me invite YOU to participate actively in this dialogue and to send your feedback directly to me.

We have identified a range of new information technologies that we intend to focus on in 2007. Amongst others we look forward to focusing on web2.0 tools during the CTA Observatory in September, to be held in collaboration with some of our development partners. Please mark your calendar so that you don’t miss this event.

Yet another innovation this year is our new electronic Christmas card, marking CTA ’s move towards increasingly using ICTs and showing some highlights of the Centre during 2006. I am confident that you will enjoy the card. But please be reassured that while the IT-community is busy with e-agriculture, e-government, e-democracy and other electronic ‘e’-activities – it is not our intention to move towards e-Xmas.

The foregoing remarks epitomize the busy and demanding year that 2006 has been – so busy that we easily committed our entire 2006 budget and more. This shows that funds permitting we can do far much more.

Please let me take this opportunity to wish Seasons’ Greetings to all our visitors and a bright and prosperous 2007.

Dr. Hansjörg Neun / Director CTA
December 2006