Eight months after our first gathering in Malawi, the Africa POWER Consortium reconvened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, hosted by our partners at EconInsight, for a longer, four-day retreat focused on turning our shared vision into concrete work.

 

Where the Salima retreat was about getting to know one another and debating first principles, Addismwas about building. Over four days, the fifteen participants finalized the Consortium’s mission statement and strategic plan, made real progress on three seed projects, and worked through the operational questions that come with running a multi-institution partnership - how project funds should flow, how we’ll monitor and evaluate our work, and how decisions get made. We agreed that the Secretariat would hold seed funding centrally going forward, a small but important change that has made collaboration