About Agriteam Canada
Corporate History
Based in Calgary, Alberta, Agriteam Canada was established in 1986 by Robert Francis and has since designed and implemented more than 170 projects worldwide in sectors including health and population; gender equality; education and education reform; agriculture and agribusiness; community development; governance and public sector reform; private sector development; legal and judicial reform; corporate social responsibility; and environment.
See full descriptions of Agriteam sector specializations …
In 1991, Agriteam opened a second office in Gatineau, Quebec, which today is home to more than 20 Agriteam employees.
Roughly 200 full-time and support staff work for Agriteam, spread across the Calgary and Gatineau offices as well as field offices in Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; Lilongwe, Malawi; Calabar, Nigeria; Tamale, Ghana; Islamabad, Pakistan; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Beijing, China; Lhasa, Tibet; Manila, Philippines; Davao, Phillipines; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Piura, Peru.
The funding agencies we have worked with include the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and United Nations Agencies. We partner with numerous Canadian universities and colleges.
Mission
Agriteam Canada’s mission is to provide management and technical expertise characterized by:
- teamwork
- results-based project design
- participatory methodologies
- local input and ownership
- sustainability
We aim to be catalysts of change and opportunity—not imposers of “solutions.” We aim to be partners in international development, contributing our best people and expertise to projects that will continue to create opportunities after we leave.
Approach
We firmly believe that for a development project to have a lasting impact, partner-country stakeholders and beneficiaries must claim it as their own. This belief guides every step of our project management approach.
From beginning to end, our projects encourage participation and collaboration. We involve developing country partners at the outset of projects to define goals and indicators and at regular intervals through progress reviews.
We have formed very successful project partnerships, both as lead firm and sub-consultant, with government ministries and departments, universities and colleges, non-governmental organizations and private sector companies.
We participate in numerous consortia to implement international development projects. Current and past partners include Agra Monenco, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Privy Council of Canada, the Government of Alberta, Health Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, CARE Canada, World University Service of Canada, Partners in Rural Development, Bombardier, Centerra Gold and Continental Minerals.
At the core of our approach to project design and implementation is capacity development, which helps to build long-term sustainability into projects. We use a tried and tested four-stage capacity development model that:
- establishes local ownership and consensus about the need for change
- develops capacity in priority areas
- ensures that capacity is applied to improve performance
- supports internalization of changes for sustainability