DRAFT

Africa Lead II - East and Southern Africa:
Communications, Engagement & Knowledge Management Plan

TOC

-Introduction

-Assessment of Communications, Engagement, and Knowledge Management

-SWOT Analysis

-ESA Audiences

-ESA Program & Services Map

-ESA Content Flow Map

-Purpose of Africa Lead II ESA Communications Efforts

-Action Plan

-Immediate Priorities

-Near Term

-Audience Targeting

-Communications Project Matrix

-Addendum

Introduction

Purpose

Address immediate and long term strategic communications priorities for Africa Lead II East and Southern Africa. Strategically expand communications into all programmatic aspects of ESA.

Objectives

The following Communications, Engagement and Knowledge Management Plan has been developed following a three-month assessment and practical application period. The plan will serve as a road map for the ESA communications team. The following are the key objectives of this plan:

-Define previous and future roles and “offerings” of ESA Communications team within ESA and larger ALII ecosystem

-Develop an actionable plan for the ESA communications team to:

-Deliver on the program-year three objective of “telling the Africa Lead story” more effectively

-Drive program activity innovation with information communications technology (ICT) and strategic communications

-Improve ESA office external communications planning

-Contribute to ESA program team activities and execute on regular program related support and services

-Increase planning and coordination with West Africa and Home Office communications strategies

Assessment of Communications, Engagement, and Knowledge Management

AL ESA has worked for some time to incorporate strategic communications approaches and systems into Africa Lead II programs. However, with limited staff capacity ESA has been focused on a targeted set of communications activities. The opportunity to expand on communications efforts is well understood by the ESA team and management has taken actions to strengthen communications efforts. This plan builds on these efforts and seeks to grow communications support capacity as “telling the Africa Lead story” becomes a more central focus across the program. Additionally, communications has been seen as more than a support mechanism within the ESA programs, as ICT and strategic communications are becoming more and more a mechanism for driving program impact in a number of activities.

From the observations made during the assessment period, it became evident that much of the priority for the ESA at the program level has been to focus communications primarily on support services to program activities. Specifically, these services have been in the area of event support services in the lead up to, during, and following up with event activities such as materials graphic design, photography, video services, as well as post event impact story development, primarily in the form of written impact stories. Even with communications staff involvement in many instances, planning for communications in activities comes near the end of the planning process. This is a result of staff orientation to purpose of communications team in process.

Over the last three months, through staff trainings and orientations the purpose of the communications team is seen less as a “service provider” and more as a strategic planning partner to identify real needs in activity planning.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths / Weakness
-Built-in system for program activity communications support
-Integrated team and activity planning includes communications staff
-Creative production capacity (video, photography, graphic design)
-In-person events have greater resonance with audiences
-Ability to convene high-level stakeholders (individuals and institutions)
-Interest from staff to have stronger understanding of strategic communications / -AL brand must remain “behind the scenes”
-Capacity building and event centric programming
-Small team vs. large potential portfolio of work
-Lack of ALII channels to distribute content
-No “return” for audiences to respond to AL communications
-Disengaged network of participants
Opportunities / Threats
-Access to large and untapped pool of agriculture leaders and former program participants for testimonials
-Strong links to leading institutions, governments, and stakeholders
-Agriculture/program activities more frequently driven by innovative ICT strategies and digital technologies
-In reflection phase - year three focused on “telling the AL story” - allows for brand to “come out from behind scenes”
-Ability to grow staff capacity based on opportunities / -“Impact” doesn’t happen overnight
-Difficult to quantify impact of capacity building
-Difficult to tell stories of event centric approach
-Communications / ICT can be seen as catch-all and cure-all

ESA Audiences

The ESA program office has, like each office, a unique set of audiences it’s seeking to reach with its programs and the content that is produced as a result of these programs. The following is a map of those audiences.

Audience
Program Audiences / Partner Audiences
Champions for Change
-Graduates
-AfricaLead II
-AfricaLead I
-Current Participants
-Potential Participants
-Training / Program participants / Implementing partners
-USAID
-Country level partners
National governments
NSAs & NGOs
Local Governments
General Audiences
Agriculture leaders
Political leaders
Youth
Women

ESA Program & Services Map

The following map provides an overview of ALII - ESA’s program activities, outputs, and targeted audiences for these activities and outputs. This map provides a shared visual and conceptual language for understanding how the ALII system works. This also assists in understanding the context in which communications activities and support services operate.

ESA Content Flow Map
This map outlines the flow of ALII-ESA communications related content.

Purpose of Africa Lead II ESA Communications Efforts

In order to strengthen ESA communications and ICT efforts, the purpose of the communications team will need to continue to shift as it has been. This shift is based on the work the communications team is actually starting to do. It will be important for staff at the regional and across the program to have a better understanding of what the communications team does.

Specifically areas highlighted below, where shifts are occurring are: 1.) increase focus on strengthening network of past program participants 2.) focus of team to support capacity building within partner institutions by providing strategic communications capacity building support and 2.) increase leadership role the communications team has in developing communications/ICT driven program activities.

Previous Priorities

  1. Support ESA program activity with communications services (content production, event support)
  2. Increase awareness of impact of Africa Lead in East and Southern Africa
  3. Provide production services to “clients” (mission centric requests, ALII office requests)
  4. Participate in program activities to close capacity gaps in agricultural sector

Proposed Priorities

  1. Capacity Building - Support ESA program activity with strategic insight and services (content production, event support, partner institution communications capacity building, and communications capacity assessments)
  2. Impact - Increase awareness of impact of Africa Lead in East and Southern Africa
  3. Network - Link together and strengthen network of Africa Lead program participants and beneficiaries
  4. ICT Innovation - Lead and participate in program activities to close capacity gaps in agricultural sector by increasing ICT innovation
  5. Services - Provide production services to “clients” (mission centric requests, ALII office requests)

ACTION PLAN

Immediate Action:

In the initial assessment period there was one area of critical importance to the work of Africa Lead II that required immediate action.

-Network strengthening - In order to improve post program Monitoring & Evaluation results, as well as build a more engaged network of past program participants to learn about impact of programs, the ESA communications team has set out to address

-Champions for Change Network - ESA Participants: A triage plan was created for the engagement of participants in the Champions for Change training. The action plan is attached as Addendum 1.

Top Near-Term Priorities (June - December 2016)

  1. Improve Content Delivery Systems - Delivery systems Increase volume of publicly distributed content by Africa Lead. Accomplish this by first improving the existing channels for content distribution from Africa Lead ESA:
  2. Social Media
  3. Direct email
  4. Website - The ESA team will take a lead in coordinating across the initiative to update the ALII website functionality
  5. SMS / Mobile messaging
  1. Improve Content Development
  2. Establish an ESA and Africa Lead II wide content editorial calendar
  3. Focus content creation on Champion Profiles
  4. Increase focus on short and long form video production
  5. Increase ESA communications capacity
  6. Identify need for additional Communications Associate position
  7. Ongoing ESA staff communications trainings
  8. Establish a communications team activity matrix for review by ESA and Home office staff to understand ongoing priorities
  9. Increase collaboration and coordination of Communications team priorities through collaborative project management tools:

AL II - ESA Audiences

The following is a plan for delivering content and messages to specific audiences, along with the vehicle it will be delivered.

Audience / Content / Vehicle / Message
Program Audiences
-Champions for Change
-Graduates
-AfricaLead II
-AfricaLead I
-Current Participants
-Potential Participants
-Training / Program participants
Partner Audiences
Implementing partners
-USAID
-Country level partners
National governments
NSAs & NGOs
Local governments
General Audiences
Agriculture leaders
Political leaders
Youth
Women

ESA Communications & Knowledge Management Projects Timeline

Task / Objective / Target Completion / Launch Date / Status
Capacity Building
Develop plan for implementing Capacity Building efforts within activities
Impact
AL Website relaunch
Implement story tracker
Develop video treatment proposal system
ALII About Video
Network
C4C Training email follow up system
C4C Facebook page revitalization
ICT Innovation
Present new activity concepts
Service
AL Website relaunch
ALII About Video
Comms Team Capacity
Finalize and present comms team activity matrix