About Us

Our vision Our mission

The AATI supports committed governments to drive inclusive and sustainable agricultural transformations by developing and enabling local delivery mechanisms to improve implementation of strategic agricultural initiatives with the final objective of alleviating poverty, promoting food security and strengthening climate resilience

The AATI is partnering with governments, private sector, and civil society to develop the “delivery infrastructure” required to improve implementation of strategic agricultural initiatives with the final objective of alleviating poverty, promoting food security and strengthening climate resilience

Our Role

Act as a catalyst and contribute to the positioning of agriculture transformation as the main driver of economic growth, job creation and poverty alleviation in Africa;
Contribute to sustainable agricultural interventions.
Through improved systems, facilitate a wide range of partnerships and resources to the countries it supports.
Participate in the design and testing of new tools essential to agricultural transformation.

Our Structure

The AATI governance model aims to promote agile decisions, active steering by partners and clear reporting

Steering Committee – A Steering Committee guides the AATI in strategic annual planning & takes strategic operational decisions (including country selection,). The steering committee is made up of AATI co-founding partners (International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), McKinsey & Company, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA))

Council of Advisors – A Council of Advisors supports and guides the Steering Committee on strategic decisions. The council offers first-hand advice and local knowledge to support the translation of AATI’s strategic vision into local contexts.

Operational team – The Operational team provides technical guidance to the Central Team

Central team – led by an Executive Director (ED), the central team supports the initiative from Nairobi, Kenya. The Executive Director plays a central role in the operationalization of the initiative by leading key activities including management of staff of the central team, representing the AATI externally, leading fundraising efforts and driving expansion of the initiative to new countries.

AATI presents a unique opportunity to strengthen the capacity to deliver an effective agenda for inclusive and sustainable agricultural transformation on the African continent. The initiative is also a unique opportunity to collaborate with governments, private sector, and civil society to overcome key challenges, and help replicate the success of agricultural transformations achieved elsewhere.

Partners

The initiative was founded by four partners. Each aims to use their local institutions and networks to maximize the impact of the support model.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people - especially those with the fewest resources - have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.

AGRA

AGRA is a farmer-centered, African-led, partnerships-driven institution that is working to transforming smallholder farming from a solitary struggle to survive to a business that thrives. In collaboration with its partners—including African governments, researchers, development partners, the private sector and civil society— AGRA’s work primarily focuses on smallholder farmers – men and women who typically cultivate staple crops on two hectares or less. AGRA is now recognized across the continent as a strong voice for African rural development, a prosperous agricultural economy, and for supporting thousands of small African businesses and millions of African families to improve agriculture as a way to ensure food security and improve their livelihoods.

McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm committed to helping organizations realize sustainable, inclusive growth. We work with clients across the private, public, and social sectors to solve complex problems and create positive change for all their stakeholders. We combine bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organizations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces that will thrive for this generation and the next.

Our values and guiding principles

Smallholder farmers

We put smallholder farmer interest at the center of everything we do.

Gender/generational equity

We strive to create a gender and generation inclusive environment.

Capacity Building

We enable the people driving the change through capability building and mentorship.

Knowledge Sharing

We invest in knowledge building and dissemination to ensure shared responsibility for learning and replicating what works.

Digital Enablers

We leverage and/or develop suitable digital tools to support lasting agricultural transformation.

Empowering

We empower governments to lead, implement and sustain the change in their countries. We adopt a demand-driven approach to our interventions. We neither prescribe nor act on the countries behalf.

Evidence-based

We make decisions based on evidence and results, we consistently reflect on our successes & failures to learn from them.

Context-specific but replicable

We embrace a modular and iterative approach tailoring support to the local political, institutional & socio-economic context while ensuring replicability of the overall approach across countries.

Collaborative

We operate as one inclusive partnership, co-creating, sharing ownership and building on each member’s capabilities to go further together.

Unifying

We adopt a unifying and non-territorial mindset towards other players and seek to build on existing capabilities and tools.

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Hosted by IFAD, AATI seeks to support African countries in implementing their agricultural strategies.