People at work [1]

Most of us have done it. Trying to maintain, rebuild and expand your own house whilst still living in it. Things like replace the roofing against storms; move the kitchen doorway; rewire the electricity; lay out the backyard for more plants; add on an extension for visitors. If you can picture CTA as a house, then the year 2001 was very much like this. Business as usual, and changes at hand. Not that CTA s well-maintained building itself saw any physical construction. The 39 people working at CTA s Wageningen office, plus one in the Brussels office, were all knuckling down to what the Director, Carl B Greenidge, calls in his introduction 'changes in the work programme to meet longer-term demands and challenges', in addition to traditional activities. He characterises the changes as equipping ACP actors with the means to cope with more commercialised markets, liberalised international trade rules, advances in information and communication (IC) technologies, and growing ACP interest in IC management. What stands out most from the Annual Report 2001 is an indelible impression of the creation of an infrastructure of institutional links a network in which CTA can function as the hub and be, in Greenidge s words, 'a knowledge development base for ACP agriculture'. The policy of developing partnerships, launched in 1996, is now taking firm hold. An attitude of partnership pervades all the Centre s activities, no matter the distinctions between actual departments. Many services have been decentralised such as Question-and-Answer, some book distribution and many central services are in network mode . The web of Spore s own network of correspondents in ACP regions is a good illustration of this, as were, in 2001, the meetings and studies which laid plans for network-style partnerships. The traditional networks of CTA were busier than ever: Spore subscriptions rose in a disciplined way above 33,000, with the surge in new women subscribers and Esporo, our Portuguese sister, stronger than ever. More than 85,000 publications were distributed, 75,750 on request, with more than 40 new titles being produced or supported. While the number of study visits shrank, the number of attendees (800-plus) grew at the year s 13 (co-)seminars, many featuring hands-on sessions, with the highlight being the seminar in Douala, Cameroun, on issues affecting federations of farmers organisation. Similarly, almost 200 people attended other seminars with CTA support, and 369 attended the 23 training sessions run by CTA an all-time high. And to answer the question many readers ask of Spore: the 2001 budget, provided 98.5% by the European Development Fund, was balanced at 12,140,000. Of this, more than 61% was devoted to operational activities, clearly above the recommended minimum. Put it this way: the first person arrives at the office around 7 in the morning, the last one leaves around 8 pm. People at work. Challenges to meet. Annual Report 2001. CTA. 2001. 134 pp. ISBN 92 9081 2567 CTA number 1078. Available free of charge. PDS subscribers: please use your order form. Downloadable in large PDF file from www.agricta.org/annrep2001 The Special Paper in CTA s Annual Report 2001, by Betty Wampfler discusses 'Achievements, limits and prospects of microfinance as a means of financing agricultural and rural development: the experience in West Africa'. The Special Paper is also available from CTA separate from the Annual Report. 12 pp. CTA number 1080. Available free of charge. PDS subscribers: please use your order form.Annual Report 2001. CTA. 2001. 134 pp