Pan-African Coalition of Transformation

Following the 2014 organization review, we recognized that we needed a more efficient way to engage with governments to disseminate findings of ATR2, share recommendations and encourage policy uptake towards implementation. We first started with country forums – such as the Ghana Transformation Forum which took ATR recommendations and applied them in the country context. While well attended, we realized it was resource intensive and would take time to reach multiple countries in a short timeframe. ACET therefore embarked on two new platforms – the African Transformation Forum and the Pan-African Coalition for Transformation as forum to engage multiple countries around key issues. We recognize that the biggest challenge to policy reform is implementation, and ACET, continuing its advisory role through PACT will be supporting this process through active monitoring and coordination of country progress in the PACT chapters. We will therefore be relying on country focal points, technical partners and private sector partners to implement solutions on the ground. This presents an inherent risk in implementation and we recognize this. We have explored a number of models and best practices to incentivize these partners to implement using existing national platforms, regional working groups, funding country events, etc. The key challenges most countries face are the lack of expertise and funding, therefore some additional incentives to be used include leveraging PACT expertise and providing vehicles through which country solutions can be funded. As the secretariat, our role is to closely monitor and follow-up on implementation and feed this learning back into the chapter for peer to peer learning. This will be a process of learning, reflection, re-adjusting and continuous improvement. We will continue to support countries with technical advice on a case-by-case basis, working with technical partners in the chapters. In 2017, we wanted to move quickly and boldly in launching the chapters whiles at the same time acknowledging our limited resource. For this reason, we grouped the chapters into two main categories- phase I and phase II. Phase I chapters included Agriculture, Extractives, Manufacturing and Resource Mobilization & Management. These four Chapters have successfully been formed. Across all four, we have engaged member countries and high-level government officials, undertaken studies and held forums all year round. In June 2018, we organised a working session for all chapters and also launched the Youth Employment and Skills chapter during the African Transformation Forum. In all, 419 attendees concurrently participated in all 5 chapter working session. During the autumn of 2018, we have focused our attention on how to ensure long term sustainability of the PACT Chapters. ACET will be launching some internal organisational changes to the management of the PACT programme in early 2019. I ACET has primarily focused our efforts to the development of PACT chapters in the areas of Agriculture, and Youth, Employment and Skills (YES), where prospects and funding are most clearly defined. ACET however still undertakes research projects relevant for the remaining PACT chapters: manufacturing, resource mobilisation and management, and extractives.