Access Knowledge & Technologies
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
Access Knowledge & Technologies
The FARA, SROs, NARS eRAILS platform (www.erails.net) was launched on Monday 13 July 2009 by Dr Monty Jones, the FARA Executive Director, during the RAILS IAALD-Africa pre-conference meeting being organized from 12-13 July at the FARA Secretariat in Accra, Ghana.
Regional Agricultural Information and Learning Systems (RAILS)
The AIDA (Agricultural Innovation in Dryland Africa) is an EU-funded partnership project between eight European and African institutions (CIRAD, University of Nairobi, AGRHYMET, RUFORUM, Bunda College-University of Malawi, PRI-Wageningen University and Research Centre, FARA, CTA,). The focus of the AIDA project will be to build capacity to generate knowledge about long-term trends and innovations in agriculture and environment in drylands integrating the knowledge of farmers and communities. Case studies will be undertaken by inter-disciplinary groups of postgraduate students supervised by international experts from Africa and Europe. Communities, universities, research institutions and policymakers will prioritise and define policy options for up-scaling the results.
The main deliverables of this project are:
• an AIDA website (now running and is constantly updated – (http://inco-aida.cirad.fr)
• a database on development projects and success stories on drylands agriculture (in process)
• a generic framework for analysis of development projects an success stories including the methodology and tools (in process)
• Fifteen postgraduate students (see the table for thematic and countries covered by the students thesis)
• International Conferences (2 already held, the launching workshop which was hosted by FARA in Accra, Ghana and the second which was hosted by University of Nairobi in Kenya).
• A policy brief (in process)
• Published papers, workshop proceedings and reports More information