Interview with Alpha Kaloga, President and founder of Green Transformation 2050

1. Hello Mr. Alpha Kaloga, you are the President and founder of the NGO GT2050. Why did you to start an organisational development dynamic in 2024 within GT2050? What was the trigger and why this approach?

Created in 2016, the NGO has had successes but also challenges. We have increased our portfolio of projects in recent years but have also had turnover in our teams. We had an idea of our strategic ambitions, but it was not very structured. We realized that we needed to retain our staffs, and we considered that we were still below the necessary means to achieve our objectives. We needed more precise objectives in terms of projects to be financed, administrative procedures to be developed, skills to be developed. We were reaching a point where we were able to secure certain resources for field projects, but in view of our growth, key questions about our organization were being asked. We therefore considered that it was the right time to sit down as a team to structure our approach.

2. How have the teams reacted to this approach?

Within the organization, people reacted differently. For the technical agents, it appeared as an opportunity to make themselves heard, to adapt their contracts, to participate more in the associative project, to specify their skills needs. For me, it was really an opportunity to structure the vision with the agents, to increase the feeling of belonging to a team. In the end, it was a collective request.

3. What has this approach brought you so far?

So, we organized a multi-day team retreat out of the office, on an island off the coast of Conakry. And it was really a tipping point, one of those key moments in the construction of a team. The fact that we were in a natural setting, with an external facilitator and a time dedicated entirely to this allowed us to tell each other things, to get to know each other better, but also to better specify our needs and priorities for action. We then took the time to digest all this and then we carried out our first action, which was the development of our strategic plan. This has given us a clear trajectory, clear areas of intervention to have more impact. The urgent priorities were identified as the need to improve the working conditions of employees and to recruit an experienced Director.

4. Having started this process, which will take some time, what advice would you give to other NGOs on this subject?

This exercise in organizational reflection is essential, but must be done in a participatory way, to retain members, to make them identify themselves in the organisation trajectory, to help with the decision-making that is often done by the Director. It gives a real roadmap for the NGO, a framework and it brings a lot to a growing NGO.

5. What are the next steps for GT2050?

They are clear to us, as I said, to have this strategic plan validated with our board of directors and our teams, which will be done shortly, and to implement it. We have decided to approach an ambitious but realistic approach, and therefore many activities are already being implemented such as improving agents’ contracts, increasing salaries, purchasing equipment, communicating on our strategic axes. We also intend to use this document to approach donors afterwards. For the future, we plan to mobilize resources to recruit an experienced director with a network to help us moving forward, to recruit a communication expert, to diversify our funds, especially domestically with, for example, the environmental responsibilities of mining companies that have a strong presence in Guinea, to continue to improvement of working conditions of the NGO’s agents,  to mobilize other NGOs working on climate change within a climate and development network in Guinea in order to have an umbrella organization to influence the processes and the debate in Guinea, etc.