AWARDS

AAPAM Annual Roundtable Conferences is the Innovation Management Award (IMA) which recognizes persons and institutions in the public service that have made outstanding contributions in the field of public administration and management in Africa.

The AAPAM-IMA programme was launched in 2005 to recognize innovations in the public sector through the introduction of new ideas and new operational and management methods. The Award is a continent-wide award programme, designed to recognize institutions, organizations and ministries which have adopted innovative and homegrown approaches to strengthen the delivery of public services in the Continent.

• To recognize and publicize innovations in the public sector which are worthy of emulation.
• To enhance the image of the public sector in Africa.
• To promote innovation in the public sector by encouraging and recognizing organizations and people for creative and effective ways of solving specific problems of administration and management.
• To facilitate the transfer of innovations and best practices as a way of improving the quality of Public Administration and Management in Africa.

Through IMA, AAPAM promotes and rewards innovation and excellence in Public Sector, in support of the realization of global and continental development Agenda including the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063, the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Award recognizes African initiatives in Public Administration and Management that demonstrate creativity and innovation in the improvement of service delivery to the citizens of the Continent.

• Dr. John-Mary Kauzya (Chairperson of the Jury) – Professor Extraordinaire University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
• Dr. Hanan Rezk – Manager, Africa Development Centre, National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (NIGSD), Egypt.
• Dr. Teferi Hailemichael – President, Ethiopian Society for Public Administration & Management Assistant Professor, Civil Service University Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• Mr. Amidou Adamou – Consultant-Formateur, Ex Vice President of APS-HRMnet for West Africa, Innovatech Afric Institut, Benin.
• Ms. Lydia Sebokedi – Acting Executive Director, Centre for Public Service Innovations South Africa (CPSI). 6. Ms. Caroline Makasi – Acting Director-General, Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, Rwanda.
• Mr. Samuel Macharia – Consultant, Public Policy and Governance, Kenya.

According to the criteria, include the following five factors:

• Innovation
  The entry is genuinely innovative within the public sector. Innovation may be in the form of a successful experiment; the implementation of effective organizational change: the translation of new ideas into practice: or harnessing new technology. The project should thus not have been carried out anyway in Africa.
• Relevance
  The innovation has relevance with the main functions of the organization and spells out clearly the impetus for the change: purpose and objectives of the change: Positive outlook for the future: potential implications for other organizations.
• Significance
  The benefits of the innovation, either actual or potential, are significant: significance can be local as well as national and should not be valued simply on the ground of size and scale of benefits.
• Sustainability
  The innovation has been implemented for a considerable period of time and has shown evidence of being institutionalized and self-sustaining, (economically, socially, and environmentally) with local resources. It should be seen to address current needs as well as futures or at least it should not jeopardize the needs of the future.
• Replication
  The innovation has the potential of universal appeal, replication and transfer. Whether the innovation contains elements that can be adopted elsewhere to solve more or less similar problems in more or less similar organizations and country set-ups.

1.  Impetus for the change;
2. Purpose and objectives of the change;
3. Description of the innovation itself,
4. How it was done,
5. Results achieved to-date;
6. Outlook for the future; and
7. Potential implications for other organizations.