Experience gained and lessons learned by AATF to date and stakeholder feedback during the Foundation’s strategy development process indicate that its core business goes beyond the traditional negotiation for access of technologies and delivery of products through available channels.  The responsibility of driving projects through the full crop value chain and ensuring product uptake by farmers requires specific proactive action on some strategic elements that impact or may impact the eventual success of the Foundation’s objectives. In its Ten Year Strategic Direction, Managing knowledge and information to support technology transfer is one of the three key thrusts.  Within this thrust, AATF launched some strategic initiatives in partnership with others that aim at improving AATF value addition and that will feed into the eventual goal realisation. These initiatives fall within AATF’s role of facilitator, catalyst and responsible party in technology access and delivery and they comprise:

• Monitoring trends in intellectual property
• Monitoring trends in biosafety regulations
• Monitoring trends in seed regulations in SSA
• Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB)
• Monitoring trends in R&D priorities in SSA
• Private/public partnerships for seed delivery
• Value chain management for crops