Partnership and Strategic Alliances
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
Partnership and Strategic Alliances
Agricultural research and development has the potential to deliver a huge impact on development. For Africa to realise this, however, it needs to reform the way ARD is organised by using innovation as the organising principle and pathway for agriculture-driven development impact. Agricultural innovation involves interaction among multiple (value chain) actors. Such actors include researchers, extension providers, development agents, the private sector (input marketers, processors, output marketers, and credit providers), policy makers, donors, farmer organisations and consumers. The FARA Secretariat recognises that advancing innovation and innovation capacity in African agriculture demands mechanisms and favourable environments for establishing and strengthening those institutions which will facilitate the organisation of the abovementioned actors and promote their interaction.
The Secretariat possesses strong continental-level comparative advantages for (i) harvesting and sharing information about institutional innovations concerning the organisation of multiple ARD actors and (ii) facilitating strategies to enhance capacity for innovation across Africa’s sub-regions. Through GFAR, the Secretariat is also well positioned to facilitate the networking of ARD actors between Africa and other regions.
Refreshingly, after decades of acting independently of each other and of the priorities of African countries, European agricultural and environmental research institutions have recently adopted policies that encourage coordination and collaboration both amongst themselves and with others. They have also established institutions such as the European Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development (EIARD), the European Consortium for Agricultural Research and Training (ECART), the European Forum on Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD), CTA, the International Centre for Development-oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA) and NATURA, which foster and facilitate this mode of engagement. This emerging mode of African–European engagement has created the need to broker partnerships between European and African institutions. The Secretariat is well placed to do this at the continental level.
Through Function 5, the Secretariat catalyses and facilitates the establishment and strengthening of partnerships and strategic alliances at various levels aimed at sustainably increasing the impact of agricultural research and development. It tests and promotes best practices in multi-stakeholder (partnership) approaches to enhance agricultural innovation. It also catalyses the assemblage and exchange of information and experience relating to partnerships and multi-stakeholder approaches to agricultural innovation. In so doing, it facilitates and catalyses linkages between strong and weak stakeholder agencies.
Partnerships and strategic alliances to support sustainable broad-based agricultural productivity, competitiveness and markets in Africa established
NSF 5 hosts a portfolio of two projects: