S EVER, the leaders we work with at AGI are

the most eloquent spokespeople for why we

do what we do. And it’s simple. We founded AGI with

a deep belief that one of the biggest challenges lead-

ers face is not working out what to do, it’s making it

happen in practice. And making it happen – whether

that means building roads or power lines, deliver-

ing vital public services like health and education, or

creating an environment where businesses can thrive

and create jobs – is what will enable Africa to reach its

potential, not grand visions and strategies. AGI works

alongside African public servants from Chiefs of Staff

down to junior analysts to build capacity and strength-

en the institutions needed to deliver the change Af-

ricans deserve, with Tony Blair and other politicians

working alongside the leaders themselves, offering the

kind of support that only someone who has walked in

their shoes can. We do this because we believe that

this is Africa’s century, but that in order to meet their

enormous potential, African nations need leaders and

governments which can deliver for their people.

Things move so quickly for the countries we work with

and for AGI as an organisation that an annual report, a

year behind the times, can feel very dated very quickly.

The report covers January to December 2011. This al-

ready seems a long time ago, so in this letter I have

tried to give a flavour of what we achieved in 2011 but

also a little of what has happened since. Inevitably,

there’s only so much I can cover. But if you take away

two things, it should be the sense endeavour and pas-

sion of AGI’s staff to make government work for the

poorest people in the world and our humble pride in

being invited to work alongside some of Africa’s most

inspiring political and public service leaders as they

strive to make the 21st century Africa’s century.

T H E R E Y O U S T A N D , T R Y I N G T O R E B U I L D A N A T I O N I N A N E N V I R O N M E N T O F R A I S E D E X P E C T A T I O N S A N D S H O R T P A T I E N C E , B E C A U S E E V E R Y O N E W A N T S T O S E E C H A N G E T A K E P L A C E R I G H T A W A Y . A F T E R A L L , T H E Y V O T E D F O R Y O U B E C A U S E T H E Y H A D C O N F I D E N C E I N Y O U R A B I L I T Y T O D E L I V E R – I M M E D I A T E L Y . O N L Y Y O U C A N N O T . N O T B E C A U S E O F T H E L A C K O F F I N A N C I A L R E S O U R C E S , B U T S I M P L Y B E C A U S E T H E C A P A C I T Y T O I M P L E M E N T W H A T E V E R C H A N G E Y O U H A V E I N M I N D D O E S N O T E X I S T .

A

H.E. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

O U R MISSION

O U R IMPACT

2011 WAS A BIG YEAR FOR AGI. Three years since

the organisation was founded, and with a proven mod-

el and results from our first two flagship programmes

in Sierra Leone and Rwanda as well as early success-

es in our third project in Liberia, we took the decision

to further expand our footprint in Africa and to take our

unique approach to new partners. The rationale was

clear. At AGI, our goal is to improve the lives of the

citizens of the countries we work in.

Effective government in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Li-

beria has the potential to improve the lives of 20 mil-

lion people. But across Africa there are a billion more,

400 million of whom live on less than $1.25 a day, most

with no access to electricity or clean water. They want

the same things we all do: a government which will

do what it can to make their lives better, and which is

effective, honest, and accountable. Our motivation for

growing AGI is to serve these people. So, during 2011

we began working in Guinea, and laid the foundations

for further expansion. Over the course of 2012, AGI

will partner with six or more countries in Africa, with

more than 40 staff across the continent.

Guinea’s independence in 1958 was followed by two

generations of misrule and economic stagnation. But

in 2010, the country held its first ever democratic elec-

tions. Alpha Condé, who had spent 40 years of his life

fighting for democracy in Guinea, was elected Presi-

dent and sworn into office on December 21st 2010.

His in-tray was daunting. 80% of the country lacked

electricity. Guinea’s vast mineral resources were

largely misused whilst the majority of the population

lived below the poverty line. Government expenditure

had doubled under the military junta which ruled be-

fore 2010, and the budget deficit had gone from 1 %

of GDP a year to 1% a month. The public finances

needed a steady hand. And alongside this, President

Condé had to shepherd Guinea’s transition from au-

tocracy to democracy, reforming the security sector

and keeping the army in the barracks. The institutions

of government were weak: as President Condé him-

self put it in the early months of his Presidency, he

had “inherited a country, but not a state”. AGI were

invited to support President Condé and began work

in December 2011. We have had a team of three AGI

staff in Conakry since then, working closely with the

President and his top team, helping him to put in place

the nuts and bolts of an effective Presidential office, to

define his key priorities, and to work towards legisla-

tive elections which must be the next step in Guinea’s

ongoing democratic journey.

At the same time, AGI strengthened our longstanding

commitments to Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Liberia.

To take just one example: AGI has worked in Liberia

since 2009, focussing on building an effective Minis-

try of State for Africa’s first female leader, President

Johnson Sirleaf. In 2011, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was re-

elected in the second peaceful Presidential elections

since the end of the war. With the strong relationships

we’d developed with the Liberian government, AGI

were well positioned to support the President and her

team in developing a “150 day plan” to ensure that her

second and final term began with a strong commit-

ment to changing the lives of the ordinary Liberians

she cares about so much. With the second term now

well underway, AGI has developed a new programme

with the Government of Liberia in which we will focus

our capacity building support on the economic devel-

opment goals at the heart of the President’s agenda

- ensuring that Liberia can bring in the foreign invest-

ment needed to rebuild the country’s infrastructure

and create jobs, and that the state can get the de-

velopment benefits it expects from concessionaires,

including from potential offshore oil. And at the centre

of government, AGI will support the Ministry of State

and Finance Ministry as they develop the processes to

drive the implementation of the President’s plan to “lift

Liberians” over the next five years, including building

roads and bringing electricity to the people.

It has been humbling to receive requests from other

African leaders interested in AGI’s support. In 2012,

we have begun work in Africa’s newest country, South

Sudan, following an invitation from President Salva

Kiir. While there is huge optimism about the future,

South Sudan is struggling to emerge from a protracted

conflict with its northern neighbour Sudan. It has the

highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and over

a million children grow up without primary education.

There are just a few hundred kilometres of paved roads

in a country the size of France. And its institutions of

government, including the Presidency, are being cre-

ated from scratch. AGI has begun to work in partner-

ship with the Government of South Sudan to explore

whether our support can help them as they build these

crucial foundations of statehood. More recently, AGI

had the privilege of beginning work with Africa’s sec-

ond woman President, Joyce Banda of Malawi.

its own future and a belief that the AGI approach of

supporting leaders to deliver real change for their peo-

ple is central to achieving this.

O U R PEOPLE , O U R PARTNERS ,

O U R L E S S O N S

AT AGI, WE CARE FIRST AND FOREMOST ABOUT

THE PRACTICAL IMPACT WE ARE ABLE TO HAVE

ON THE GROUND. We pride ourselves on being an

organisation that rolls our sleeves up and gets things

done. But we are also deeply reflective and ever curi-

ous about what works in development and about our

place within this landscape. We are committed to be-

ing the kind of organisation that learns from our fail-

ures as much as our successes, so that we can trans-

late that learning into improved performance. In 2010

we began a strand of work to codify our emerging les-

sons and to share these as broadly as possible with

practitioners and the wider development community.

In 2011 we appointed the innovative firm, Agulhas Ap-

plied Knowledge, to lead independent evaluations of

all of AGI’s programmes, and partnered with the UK’s

Overseas Development Institute to run an event en-

titled “re-thinking leadership for development”.

We ended the year by joining with Rajiv Shah of USAID

and three senior African ministers to lead a discussion

at the High-Level Aid Effectiveness Forum at Busan

on the theme of “taking charge not taking charity: how

Africa can lead its own development”.

Widening our impact while remaining true to the values

and quality which have made AGI successful thus far

is a central challenge, and one we do not take lightly.

Every country is complex, its circumstances a result

of the unique twists and turns of its history. But the

countries AGI is starting to work with now are in many

cases larger, more fragile and more recently emerg-

ing from conflict than those we began working with in

2008. However, we do not let this challenge daunt us.

Instead we meet it with optimism, a conviction that

every African nation deserves the chance to determine

With so much happening in 2011, it should come as no

surprise that AGI’s leadership team have focused on

developing our organisational infrastructure, so that

we can rise to the challenge ahead of us. We have

renewed our focus on the building blocks of every or-

ganisation: brilliant people and sustainable funding.

AGI’s people are a source of endless pride and inspi-

ration for me. Over the past four years, we have hired

more than 100 amazing staff from six continents, with

backgrounds in everything from Mumbai’s business

district to the Australian government, from campaign-

ing global NGOs to top flight management consultan-

cies operating in London, Lagos and New York. What

this diverse set of people share is a different perspec-

tive on Africa, a view that development is something

done by not to a nation, and a passion for rolling their

sleeves up and supporting leadership in some of the

toughest places in the world. As we grow, we need

more such people, and I urge those of you reading this

letter, whether you’re a senior civil servant in Paris or

a business leader in Lagos, to put yourselves forward

or pass the message on to friends and colleagues. AGI

– and Africa - needs people like you, people who can

bring their experiences of the world to bear as they

work shoulder to shoulder with African public servants

in Conakry, Lilongwe, Juba, Kigali, Freetown and Mon-

rovia.

At AGI, both we and the governments we work with

owe a debt of gratitude to our funders, who have be-

lieved and invested in our different approach to devel-

opment since the very beginning. Without their sup-

port, none of what we have achieved would have been

possible. With our plans for expansion come even

greater fundraising challenges for the organisation:

over the two years 2011-2013, our budget will nearly

double to around £6m a year. In order to be able to

respond to demands for support as they arise, rather

than as funding permits, we have established a new

“rapid action fund”, a pot of unrestricted funds which

allow AGI to immediately respond to a request like

that we received from the new President of Malawi, or

President Johnson Sirleaf’s call for support with her

150 day action plan. It is because we have funding

like this – as well as our more established, longer term

partnerships such as that with USAID - that AGI can

move in hours rather than months to meet demand.

If you are inspired by this message, and share our

optimism that this is Africa’s century, I’d love to

hear from you. We need you to take our unique ap-

proach to development to new countries. To staff

our growing organisation. To share our results and

our impact with a broad audience. Without our sup-

porters, our vital work would not be possible.

On behalf of myself and our Patron, Tony Blair,

thank you!

M E S S A G E F R O M T H E C H A I R O F T R U S T E E S

I AM DELIGHTED TO BE INTRODUCING the Africa Governance Initiative’s third annual report. The countries of

Africa summed up the importance of building effective government institutions in their submission to the global

summit on aid effectiveness in 2011:

“Capacity development is critical for achieving Africa’s renewal based on clear vision, strategic plan-

ning, effective and accountable leadership and capable institutions at all levels. It constitutes the ‘how’

for the continent to exit from aid dependency towards self-sufficiency and sustainable development”

African Consensus Position on Aid Effectiveness, submitted to the high level forum on aid effectiveness

The work of AGI in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Liberia has been focused in 2011 on precisely this issue:

supporting African governments to build capable institutions which can implement reforms for the benefit of their

people, ultimately reducing poverty and improving lives.

Building effective institutions that will last is not easy, particularly in light of the complex and fast-changing back-

drop against which AGI operates. As AGI takes on new challenges, either in new countries or in new areas of work

in the countries in which we currently operate, there will inevitably be risks and challenges to overcome. Our focus

as the Trustees of the organisation is to make sure that AGI continues to deliver against our charitable aims while

managing these risks effectively.

The Trustees would also like to thank our funders for their continued generous support without which AGI would

not be able to achieve what it has. We also want to say a special word of gratitude to the Chief Executive, Kate

Gross, for her energetic and purposeful leadership; the staff of AGI; and the partners they work alongside for their

commitment, passion and professionalism –they are the people that make AGI’s work so special.

Liz Lloyd, Chair of the Board of Trustees

D O W N L O A D 2 0 1 1 A N N U A L R E P O R T

( P D F )