The External Review Panel members wish to express their sincere appreciation to the Board, management and staff of IITA for their full and frank cooperation in every way throughout the course of the Review. The Panel is particularly grateful for their open and constructive attitude, and for the generous time and help given to us whenever requested.
The arrangements made for our visits to the Headquarters and to the regions were excellent and so were the visits to national programmes in Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Kenya and Uganda. We are grateful to IITA's staff for their assistance and hospitality during our country visits. We appreciate the cooperation received from IITA's collaborators and others in the national programmes who met us and shared their views and insights.
Dr. Lukas Brader, Director General, and Mrs. Frances McDonald, Assistant to the Director General, fully cooperated with the TAC and CGIAR Secretariats throughout the Review, from its planning stages to the completion of this report. They deserve our special thanks for this and for ensuring that our working environment and support facilities were always conducive for efficient performance. We also thank Dr. and Mrs. Brader for their kind hospitality.
The Panel wishes to acknowledge with sincere thanks the excellent work done by Ms. Dominique Veck-Rosignoli of the TAC Secretariat and Ms. Toyin Oke and Ms. Philomena Arabome of IITA, in the preparation of this report. They were ably assisted by Mr. Augustine Idoko.
Many IITA staff went beyond the call of duty to help the Panel during the different phases of the review. In particular, we express our thanks to: Mr. L. McDonald, Computer Manager at IITA for ensuring that our equipment functioned satisfactorily right up to the end; to Mr. David Sewell and Mr. Robert Williams, the pilots of the two IITA aircrafts for safely transporting us between destinations during our field visits in West and Central Africa during the Harmattan season; to Dr. Sagary Nokoe, of the IITA Biometrics Unit, for help in the statistical analysis of the information from the NARS survey on IITA's past and future programmes; and to Mr. Kim Atkinson, Head of Publications Unit at IITA, for his editorial assistance.
We gratefully acknowledge the help received from several of the staff of the TAC and CGIAR Secretariats, during the course of the review. We are particularly grateful: to Dr. Selcuk Ozgediz and Ms. Liz Field at the CGIAR Secretariat; and to Ms. Marioara Lantini and Ms. Jennifer Kitching-Parise, of the TAC Secretariat, for their valuable assistance during the planning and organization of the Review.
