About
What We Do
Our strategic and specific goals, as well as the conceptualisation and design of tralac’s programs of interventions (or activities) are based on our values, anchored on foundational principles of rules-based governance –transparency, accountability, equity, and inclusion. We also take guidance from the revised 2019 OECD/DAC Revised Evaluation Criteria Definitions and Principles for Use. The OECD/DAC criteria provide a sound board for the design and development of tralac’s overall strategy and a checklist against which specific interventions or activities are measured.
Our understanding of these principles in the context of tralac’s work is as follows:
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Effectiveness: Does the activity achieve its objectives?
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Efficiency: How efficiently are resources being used? How can we use our resources (financial, human) more efficiently?
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Impact: What difference does this activity make (both at the individual and institutional level)?
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Sustainability: Does the activity have a lasting impact (is there a transfer of impact beyond the direct beneficiary)?
The recent addition of a fifth principle to this compact – coherence – resonates very much with tralac’s ethos or values. We believe that internal consistency, in terms of our vision, strategy and specific interventions in our work program, is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable impact. We adopt a systems thinking approach to the interventions across the three pillars of our work, leveraging the linkages, synergies and feedback loops.
tralac welcomed the adoption of the United Nations 2030 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and we link our objectives to the the achievement of these goals for African countries.
Our strategic objectives are:
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To contribute to specific Sustainable Development Goals: ensuring that the foundational principle of ‘leaving no one behind’ finds practical application in all our programs to ensure inclusivity and voice for marginalised stakeholders in trade policy and governance (our focus will be primarily, but not exclusively, on women and youth, and Africa’s least developed countries)
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To build both technical and institutional capacity to enhance trade policy making, international trade agreements and rules-based trade governance, so that trade contributes to sustainable development outcomes
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To ensure that we comply with principles of good governance in all we do and how we engage, in an inclusive and respectful manner, with partners and beneficiaries
Our specific objectives are:
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To develop innovative, appropriate, and sustainable interventions that inform, capacitate, and empower specific beneficiaries, in order to respond to:
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current multilateral governance developments, including the crisis in the World Trade Organization, climate change and the COVID-19 global pandemic – specifically to enhance the participation of African countries to address these crises
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emerging developments on Africa’s trade and integration agenda, including the negotiations and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement,
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the COVID-19 impact on Africa - which confirms our interconnectedness on the continent and the importance of regional integration and the imperative for sustainable development
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support the empowerment of women other marginalized groups through trade (Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 5)
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productive capacity and resilience and to facilitate trade, to be prepared for future crises and challenges (Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9)
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to consolidate our inter-disciplinary analysis of current and emerging issues on Africa’s trade and integration agenda. Being able to respond at short notice to emerging developments, requires expert capacity and continuing learning
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to nurture existing partnerships and build new partnerships at the national, regional, continental, and global levels to enhance our capacity and impact (Sustainable Development Goal 16)
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To expand tralac’s reach to the West and Central African region, building on lessons from our work in East and Southern Africa by inviting participants to training and dialogue events. This is necessary, acknowledging the implications of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement - a continent-wide integration initiative
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To build our own capacity and resource base to assure the sustainability of tralac as a model non-profit organisation
Our work program, which is designed to achieve these objectives, is anchored on three pillars:
Inform
Analysis and providing access to trade-related information, including a Daily Trade News Service and Monthly Newsletter
Capacitate
Empower
tralac’s flagship Annual Conference, AfCFTA Stakeholder Workshops and other events