After the successful ASAF Strategy Development Meeting which took place virtually on 27 and 28 June 2020, two follow-up meetings were organised on 25 July and 14 August 2020. The overall aim was to finalise both ASAF’s vision and mission statement on which two groups had been working in the meantime.

The follow-up meeting on 25 July 2020 welcomed 10 committed ASAF members. After summarising the first suggestions outlined during the SD Meeting end of June, the vision working group (4 ASAF members) presented the following ASAF vision as result of their work:

"A collaborative forum driven by its united members to promote quality education and global integration for a sustainable development of Africa."

The other participants were given the opportunity to comment on this final vision and to suggest possible amendments. However, and luckily, it turned out that the vision was approved by the fellow members. It was pointed out that the statement refers slightly to the vision of the African Union and that it is precise and on point. Due to the limited time frame of this first meeting, the mission working group could only touch upon their first results regarding ASAF’s mission statement.

Therefore, a second follow-up meeting was organised on 14 August. 5 ASAF members joined the meeting to first discuss the working group’s suggestions. Formulating a final mission statement together turned out to be a bit more challenging, but after discussing actively which points should definitely be included, the members decided the final mission statement for ASAF to be:

"Building a pan-African forum integrating African mobility students, alumni and other relevant stakeholders in order to contribute to policy development, and promote quality and inclusive education for the sustainable development of Africa."

Afterwards, one of the participants, who is part of the strategy working group, presented some of the preliminary results this group had come to so far. These concern the following aspects: quality education, employability, membership development and policy influence. A detailed report will follow when the follow-up meetings with the strategy working group, the working plan working group and the membership working group will have taken place. Once these next steps are completed, more results can be presented.

Cologne, 18 August 2020