The current AfAS Executive Committee’s term expires on 31 March 2022, after 3 years in office. A new Executive Committee will therefore be elected at the General Assembly which will be held at the end of the planned AfAS Annual Conference in March 2022. The process for electing the new Executive Committee, which will take office from 1st April 2022 for a three-year term, is outlined below. A President and deputy President of AfAS will also be named from the elected Executive Committee members.
- The Constitution stipulates that the current Executive Committee must appoint a Nominations Committee which will provide a list of all nominees to be elected as members of the Executive Committee and a total of 8 members are due to be elected at the General Assembly. The Constitution, however, does not stipulate the actual nomination process that must be followed, other than having none of the current Executive Committee members on the Nominations Committee, with exception of the President of AfAS who will only intervene when there is an impasse within the Nominations Committee in agreeing the list of nominated members.
- Given that AfAS has appointed a permanent Head of Secretariat who is the only Senior Manager of AfAS, this person will also be the General Secretary of AfAS and a non-elected member of the Executive Committee. The officer designations of General and Assistant General Secretary will therefore be phased out on the AfAS Executive Committee and be replaced with general designations.
- The Executive Committee will also include four non-elected members: the immediate past President of AfAS, the Director of the IAU-OAD and an official representing the Government of the Secretariat’s host country; the host country is also responsible for providing the core funding for AfAS operations. These three, in addition to the AfAS Project Manager, will be Ex-Officio members of the Executive Committee and have no voting rights.
- Thus, there will be 7 (seven) elected members of the Executive Committee and the Nominations Committee will be tasked to review the nominees to ensure that all meet the criteria agreed upon for nomination and that they are diverse in terms of geography, race, age, and gender.
- Should the Nominations Committee determine that the list of nominees do not satisfy the diversity criteria, it will have the authority to request further nominations after the closing date.
- The election process will be managed by the Secretariat. The following activities will be implemented:
- Compilation of a document stipulating the Roles & Responsibilities of Executive Committee members (to be included with Call for nominations)
- Compilation of the Nominations Committee’s Terms of Reference (ToR).
- A general Call for nominations will be issued to the African Astronomy Community to nominate professional astronomers for the 7 officers. Nominators must provide a brief motivation.
- The President and Vice President cannot be from the same country.
- Any person may nominate the candidates, but nominees must be based in Africa and be members of AfAS. However, if nominees are not members of AfAS at the time of nomination, a membership application must be submitted together with the nomination.
- Each person will be allowed to nominate a maximum of 7 candidates.
- The Executive Committee will appoint a Nominations Committee consisting of three independent members to review the nominations. This Committee will receive administrative support from the Secretariat.
- The Nominations Committee will review all the nominations and present the final list of nominees to the current Executive Committee for their information.
- The nominees that have been accepted by AfAS will be advised of their nomination and the final list of nominees will be issued to the African Astronomy Community. Should there be more than 7 nominees, the Community will be advised that there will be elections at the General Assembly in March 2022. All membership of AfAS will be allowed to vote.
- If there are no more than 7 nominees, there will no elections and the nominated members will be deemed to be elected.
- The President and Vice President will be elected by all members of AfAS at the General Assembly. Members will be requested to vote for these positions from the list of the 7 elected members of the new Executive Committee.
- The elections will be a two-phase process:
- Phase 1: All AfAS members at the General Assembly will elect the seven (7) Executive Committee members from the list presented by the Nominations Committee.
- Phase 2: After the election of the seven (7) Executive Committee members all AfAS members will be requested to elect the President and Vice-President from the seven duly elected members.