USAID Inaugurates ASSESS Project & Africa Center of Excellence   


The U.S. Agency for International Development, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, the University of Rhode Island, Delaware State University, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,  on Friday launched the Analytical Support Services and Evaluations for Sustainable Systems (ASSESS) Project.

The project is funded through the USAID/West Africa regional mission, whose goal is to promote social and economic well-being advanced by West Africans.  

Spanning 21 countries, USAID/West Africa designs and implements programs with West African partners to strengthen systems of non-violent conflict management, support economic growth and expand quality health services.  

This was in a statement issued in Accra and copied to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) on Friday, October 10, 2014.

The statement said the American people, through USAID, provide economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 100 countries worldwide.

  
It further said, through independent evaluations, analysis and the sharing of best practices, ASSESS will promote creativity, innovation and learning by USAID and its development partners, with the ultimate goal of increasing the effectiveness of their programs.

“Through ASSESS, technical experts will provide evaluations and assessments to bolster our development efforts in agriculture, environment, trade and energy,” said U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, Gene A. Cretz.
  
“Lessons learned from these endeavors can be shared across the region with public and private sector actors to improve and increase crop yields and production, thus effectively ‘scaling-up’ our developmental impact.” the statement added.
 
The statement mentioned the four ASSESS Project encompasses  components as follows:

Evaluations – to improve programmatic interventions

Learning Agenda – to promote experimentation, innovation and measured risk-taking.

Capacity Building – of local and regional evaluation organizations.

Management of the Accra Center of Excellence (ACE) – center of learning.

The launch included the ribbon-cutting of the new ACE facility—a training and conference center in Accra that will stimulate networking, knowledge sharing and partnership building to further strengthen development programs and improve their outcomes across the region.

GBC