CTA's mission is spelt out in Annex III of the Cotonou Agreement:
To strengthen policy and institutional capacity development and information and communication management capacities of ACP agricultural and rural development organisations. It shall assist such organisations in formulating and implementing policies and programmes to reduce poverty, promote sustainable food security, preserve the natural resource base and thus contribute to building self-reliance in ACP rural and agricultural development.
The Annex describes CTA's revised mandate, how to implement it, and the supervisory structure under which CTA is to operate.
The revised mandate provided the basis of CTA's Strategic Plan and Framework for Action 2001-2005. The Plan sets out the Centre's operating objectives, and how these translate into programmes of activities (as shown in the diagram).
Objective 1 - improving the availability of and access to appropriate information - deals with the symptoms of information and communication management (ICM) constraints. These could include shortcomings in accuracy, reliability, timeliness, processing and adaptation.
Objective 2 - improving ICM capacity - addresses the causes of these symptoms.
Programmes 1 and 2 relate to Objective 1. Programme 3 relates to Objective 2. As shown in the diagram, each programme has two objectives.
Underpinning the work of all three programmes are four key strategic issues, described in CTA's Strategic Plan and Framework for Action 2001-2005: