IUCEA Hosts Workshop to Enhance Communication Skills of ACE II Teams
The Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) with the financing of the World Bank conducted a training workshop for ACE II Communication Officers and Center Leaders from May 27th to 31st, 2024 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The workshop aimed to strengthen the capacity of the teams at the Africa Centers of Excellence to communicate and disseminate their results to stakeholders effectively.
The workshop was facilitated by renowned Communication Experts Ms. Ann Wangui Gichuhi and Mr. Alexander Njiiri Matheri. The facilitators provided interactive frameworks that guided the participants in improving their center communication plans. The templates were diverse looking at objective setting, stakeholder mapping and strategic approaches matrix.
“The choice of topics presented during the workshop was informed by the communication gaps demonstrated by the individual centers. The gaps included incomplete or non – existent websites, to mitigate this gap an opportunity was awarded to each center to take an audit of their website and improvement areas were cited,” said Ms. Gichuhi.
There were many sessions of brain-storming in buzz groups that generated useful insights into choosing appropriate strategic approaches for positioning the brand.
Participants were also guided on crafting an elevator pitch to help individual participants become confident in pitching the center’s unique selling proposition towards effective brand positioning. Center branding was also a key concern as most centers do not have branding guidelines. It became apparent for each center to develop a brand book that would guide key stakeholders.
“Our expectation is that communication officers will showcase what the Centers are doing and demonstrate results,” said Prof. Meshack Obonyo, ACE II Project Coordinator, IUCEA. He added, “A study was carried out to develop a framework for university and private sector engagement and one of the main findings was the low level of engagement between universities and the industry due to the universities failure to position themselves effectively by clearly articulating and demonstrating the value they bring to the table. This is an area where communication can help us.”
Observations from the participants:
“The workshop has equipped me with useful communication skills which will be useful to improve the visibility of the Center,” Ms. Omega Manyika, a participant from Regional Centre of Excellence in Agricultural Policy Analysis (APA) at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR)
“Our Centre has significantly benefited from the feedback on the website and the communication strategy,” Mr. Jimmy Kainja, Centre for Resilient Agri-food Systems (CRAFS) University of Malawi.
“This training has been an eye opener for me and it will help me to productively develop stories that meet requirements as learnt. It was so interactive and hands-on which enhanced my grasping ability levels of the content delivered during this training,” said Mr Webster Jassi from APA.
About ACE II AF (Additional Financing)
The ACE II AF project is financing agriculture Africa Centers of Excellence in Malawi and Mozambique to strengthen agriculture higher education and research in the region. With financing from the World Bank, the ACE II AF is proposed to scale-up the successful Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) model to further build the region’s capacity in providing high quality training and applied research in the field of agriculture. ACE II AF will strengthen six competitively selected Centers of Excellence, five in Malawi and one in Mozambique with both countries receiving US$30 million each.
