PICOTEAM is a network-organisation with nodes in Africa, Latin America and Europe
  that supports efforts to bring about change and innovations for sustainable development.

PICOTEAM Ltd. PICO Southern Africa PICO Uganda PICO Tanzania PICO Latin America
PICO Academy for Practitioners PICO Knowledge Networking

Our Experiences

Project STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT and START UP of RUFORUM

Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture in Eastern and Southern Africa (RUFORUM, Uganda) – a sub-regional Organisation for Universities

Duration 11.2004 – 06.2005 and further involvement since
Country / Region East and Southern Africa
Services delivered Team leader of strategic planning task force and facilitator for the stakeholder interaction workshops. This included:
  • Development of the design of the strategic planning process,
  • Facilitation / guidance of the strategic planning process design workshop
  • Facilitation of 5 national stakeholder workshops in each country involved
  • Facilitation of regional synthesis workshop
  • Facilitation and guidance of the write up and writing certain sections of the strategic plan
  • Design of the launch event,
  • Further coaching towards development of the implementation plan
Achievements The transformation of RUFORUM from a grant scheme to a membership-based sub-regional organisation was a challenging task. The strategic planning process therefore was a highly participative process to mobilise the ownership of the new organisation by the member universities, their vice chancellors, deans and departments. The university managers were involved from the design to the write up, which also helped them to internalise the methodology for strategic planning which they then also applied in their own universities.

The strategy development process and strategic plan 2005-2015 was developed in a four stage process:
  • joint design of the strategic planning and start up process with the involved member universities
  • national stakeholder consultation workshops to bring out the issues and priorities in each of the countries
  • further analysis by the task force
  • bringing together the national issues and priorities into a regional synthesis to define the new organisations strategic goals and modalities to operate
  • official launch with feedback of stakeholders and finalisation
The process was very successful as it brought out new dimensions in terms of capacity development in the universities. The facilitation mode and the experience of the facilitators triggered the deep analysis of the systemic bottlenecks which the universities face, which go way beyond resources and expertise – the usual ‘demands’. The strategic agenda of RUFORUM was much more defined as a support to the transformation of Universities to catch up with the demands of a dynamic agricultural sector which requires new profiles of graduates. Universities need to become centres of specialisation for which regional collective action is required.

The strategy was well received by all stakeholders and donors.

PICOTEAM has also provided advice in the development of the operational plan, based on the new strategy and works in a strategic partnership with RUFORUM ever since.
Partners RUFORUM Secretariat, 10 Agricultural Universities in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, National Agricultural Research Institutes
Funding Organisation RUFORUM, based in Uganda
PICOTEAM members involved Dr. Jürgen Hagmann, Dr. Patrick Okori, Dr. Paul Kibwika,

Dr. Maria Nassuna-Musoke
Links / Publications

http://www.ruforum.org/

Download the strategic plan of RURORUM from this website:

http://www.ruforum.org/docs/reports/RUFORUM_Strategic_Plan.pdf