So far, So good

Issaka Traore

Not daunted by the hiccups of the first day of the 6^th AfrEA Conference in Accra, the Board member in charge of Programmes and Socials,  Mr Issaka H. Traore is happy with the way things are going having found his rhythm once the meetings and workshops got underway.

As head of the task team putting together the schedule of programs and activities such as the papers, panels and workshops and the social events like the roundtables, one- on-one meetings and lunches, in effect, all the sideline activities, Issaka leads a team of volunteers, who he says have been very helpful.

Keeping to time is a general problem in Africa, but as Issaka says, “We don’t work alone, we rely on other task teams such as the Scholarship team, which takes care of submission of workshop papers. Since some papers came late, we couldn’t release the final program early enough. But, we are working to improve this.”

“You see, while we have been planning this event over a year now, the late arrival of some of the papers and inputs from some of our partners meant we could not have the two clear weeks we wanted to ensure everything was ready.”

That notwithstanding, things are beginning to settle and, “so far, so good” Issaka told Reportage on day two of  the conference. “I think the pre-conference  workshops and meetings, have helped to enhance and improve the skills of the participants. It has been good, particularly for us African evaluators, as we met and shared ideas with our counterparts from other continents. It has been very beneficial, learning of some of the best practices from around the world, and we can only move to build on what we have learned in those first two days.”

Putting together an international conference with a task team scattered around the globe is no mean undertaking, and this past year working on this project has been very exciting for Issaka. “Of course, we had a great local ground handling team that also helped. I think we have done well.”