About Us

WHO WE ARE

The mandate of CPAT is reflected in VCDP’s Financing Agreement signed between the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Section II, Schedule 1: Part II(a) of the Financing Agreement states “CPAT will provide advisory service and support services to VCDP and other IFAD-funded Projects/ Programmes in Nigeria. Based on lessons learned and identified needs, the support services will cover financial management and procurement, as well as cross-cutting areas, i.e., environment and climate change, gender and youth, monitoring and evaluation, knowledge management and communication, and conflict resolution in the IFAD-assisted Projects/ Programmes in Nigeria”.

The specific objectives of CPAT are to:

  • Provide technical advisory services to IFAD-funded projects/Programmes to enhance achievement of set results in the areas of gender and youth mainstreaming, nutrition and food security, environment and climate change, financial inclusion, monitoring and evaluation as well as knowledge management and communication. The CPAT will identify good practices, weaknesses and recommend areas and means of improvement;
  • Provide advisory services to IFAD-funded projects/programmes in financial management and audit to improve adherence to the financial management and Procurement Procedures applicable to IFAD-funded projects/programmes, as well as in selected technical areas;
  • Organize training and capacity building for project/programmes teams in selected areas based on needs-assessment;
  • Participate in supervision missions of the respective projects/programmes.
  • Organize project implementation support meetings on needs-based.

The Country Programme Advisory Team (CPAT) provides technical advisory services to all IFAD-funded projects in Nigeria in the following thematic areas:

  • Environment and Climate Change: Mainstreaming Environment & Climate Change Adaptation Activities into IFAD-supported Programmes. Advisory services on the overall management of activities related to mainstreaming climate change adaptation measures and sustainable environmental practices into the production, processing and marketing of commodities across IFAD funded projects.
  • Knowledge Management & Communication: Promoting Knowledge Capitalization, Sharing and Communication.
  • Financial Inclusion: Providing technical leadership and guidance to IFAD projects and partners on financial services to rural communities, the unbanked and underserved populations, smallholder farmers and other agricultural value chain actors within the anticipated IFAD-funded projects.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation: Providing guidance to all the IFAD projects on the overall Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) strategy and the implementation of related activities, ensuring the alignment of the M&E strategy with the arrangements of the FMAFS to ensure harmonized tracking of results from the implementation of IFAD projects.
  • Nutrition & Food Security: Mainstreaming Nutrition and Dietary Diversity into IFAD projects. Facilitate the analysis of nutrition gaps along the supply chain of priority commodities in the project locations.
  • Gender and Youth Mainstreaming: Provision of technical advisory services to support youth, gender, and rural institution activities across IFAD projects in Nigeria. Also, to provide technical backstopping on capacity building activities aimed at providing information, knowledge, and readily usable methodologies on youth and gender development activities across the projects.
  • Financial Management and Audit: Providing financial management guidance to support risk management, coherent and consistent application of procedures, and cross-cutting activities of the projects’ finance units. Also, to ascertain and evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of the financial management and internal control framework; facilitate compliance with IFAD and Federal Government project financing agreements, IFAD disbursement procedures, the Project Implementation Manual, etc. Identify critical weaknesses (if any) and areas for improvement. 
  • Support to procurement – Provide technical advisory services and capacity building in procurement to projects to help accelerate implementation of approved AWPB while maintaining compliance with the IFAD and Federal Government project financing agreements, IFAD disbursement procedures, Project Implementation Manual, etc; identify critical weaknesses if any, and areas for improvement. 
  • Management and Coordination – Overall Coordination of CPAT Operations.

Implementation entities: CPAT reports to FMAFS through the Projects Coordinating Unit (PCU) that is responsible for projects coordination. ‘

WHAT WE DO

CPAT provides support to the projects in the following areas:

Technical support

  1. Review of activities during the design, implementation, and reporting for enhanced quality assurance, technical activities and policy support, knowledge management, and communication.
  2. Develop best practices guides based on the successful experience of FGN-IFAD projects, IFAD guidelines, and Nigeria’s transformational policies for agriculture.

3. Conduct trainings for projects on a need basis.
4. CPAT provides support to projects to ensure they develop and implement exit and sustainability strategies for continued and improved support to smallholder farmers.

Facilitate Strategic Dialogue Meetings

CPAT to organize and facilitate project implementation support meetings and strategic dialogue meetings (aiming at anticipating challenges and identifying remedial actions):

  1. Project implementation support meetings on a monthly and quarterly basis.
  2. FMAFS/PCU and IFAD Portfolio quarterly strategic dialogue meetings.

Planning and Reporting

  1. Support projects in the early preparation of AWPB to fast-track approvals.
  2. Review and provide feedback on project periodic reports, ToRs and other technical documents.
  3. Support financial and procurement capacity through training, review, and follow-up of missions’ recommendations for the effective, timely implementation of AWPB in compliance with financing agreements and procedures.
  4. Support the lead agency in the regular oversight and review of IFAD-funded projects/programmes.

Enhance the results of FGN – IFAD portfolio missions

  1. Contribute to supervision and implementation support missions.
  2. Support projects in their mid-term review and project completion review.
  3. Support in the field consultations and design of COSOP.
  4. Organize pre-mission support for IFAD-funded projects. 
  5. Support projects in the follow-up on missions’ recommendations.
  6. Support in the design of new projects. 
  7. Support project closing processes.

Why Choose Us

Reasons people choose us:

Qualified Personnel
High Expertise
Technical Capacity
Availability and timeliness
Swift Response
Quality Assurance

WHERE WE WORK

The Country Programme Advisory Team (CPAT) is currently providing technical support to 3 IFAD-funded projects in Nigeria:

  1. The Value Chain Development Programme – Additional Financing (VCDP-AF). The project is covering 9 states of Anambra, Benue, Ebonyi, Enugu, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun and Taraba.
  2. The Livelihoods Improvement Family Enterprises in the Niger Delta (LIFE-ND). The project is covering 6 states of Abia, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Ondo,  
  3. Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ). The project is covering 2 states of Kano and Ogun.

CPAT COMPOSITION

§Lead Advisor

§Youth and Gender Specialist

§Environment and Climate Change Specialist

§Nutrition and Food Security Specialist

§Financial Inclusion Specialist

§Monitoring & Evaluation Advisor

§Knowledge Management and Communication Advisor

§Senior Internal Auditor

§Senior Financial Management Officer

§Liaison Officers

§Junior Financial Management Officer.

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