Central Africa

The focus of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) assignment was to assist AMICAALL Cameroon to develop a project management toolkit to help in the sustainable development of municipal teams and build capacity within the organisation. The team worked on the development of a guide for the municipalities and municipal HIV/AIDS teams for the preparation, monitoring and evaluation of municipal HIV/AIDS plans. The team were also asked to map out the resource mobilisation required at a local level.

The PwC team was deployed to support national authorities and mine action institutions in launching a strategic response to the findings of the national landmine impact surveys. Specifically, the PwC team supported the development of an impact-based strategic plan, and helped national authorities to strengthen their capacity for strategic planning in the mine action sector.

World Vision Ethiopia (WVE) is part of the International World Vision Partnership with the overall goal to enhance livelihood security at a household level. The team were required to assist WVE staff to formulate a draft strategy for local market development. Elements of such a strategy included establishing market information systems and market analysis in order to enable smallholder farmers and other local businesses opportunities to add value to their production. The team helped to build the capacity of the WVE staff in data collection, testing, business development and promotion.

The Ulysses team worked with BasicNeeds, an organisation which works to alleviate the suffering of people with mental illnesses. The team was asked to act as a facilitator in both internal and external discussions. The internal discussions focussed on the strategy of the organisation, while the external discussions brought together stakeholders such as donors and the government to discuss the potential implications of forthcoming legislation on the community mental health & development plan.

The focus of the PwC assignment was to strengthen the municipal management and information systems related to HIV/AIDS among the different actors at the ward and municipal levels in two municipalities, and to develop, review, assess and provide guidance on their evaluation and monitoring systems.

The challenge the AMICAALL programme was facing was the need to provide certain guarantees to the ACB Foundation regarding the disbursement of the funds among the different micro-projects running under AMICAALL. Our team had a very clear contribution to make, ensuring a balance between saved and used funds according to the grant recommendations and guidelines. This would result in micro-projects having a higher level of resources to concentrate on the beneficiaries and consequently a more effective use of the available funds.

Benefiting from the learning of the first Ulysses team to BasicNeeds in Ghana this team were asked to focus on the development of BasicNeeds and its partners, to strengthen their capacity to ensure the long term sustainability of mental health programmes in Uganda and beyond. The team were required to work with two of BasicNeeds’ project partners, Mental Health Uganda and Kamwokya Christian Caring Community, to help integrate the mental health work into their strategic agenda. The team also to helped BasicNeeds to strengthen its management of such partnerships.

Ulysses 2004
Alliance of Major's Initiative against HIV/AIDS in Africa (AMICAALL) : Uganda

The mission of this assignment was to develop an evaluation and assessment mechanism for HIV/AIDS projects working together with the local municipalities of Jinja and Kamuli to strengthen their response to HIV/AIDS. The team was based in Jinja, 80 km away from Kampala, the capital city.

At the Elias Mutale Centre (a youth training centre for agro-processing and other local resources base socio economic activities in Kasama, Northern Province), the team focused on ensuring the long term sustainability of the centre by looking into the centre’s income generation activities and its sustainability. The team also worked with the centre staff to assess and implement financial management systems to ensure the transparency and accountability of the centre, which will contribute to increase the donor contributions to the project.