Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA CP)
Rationale and Objective
A study of Africa’s ARD initiated by FARA’s secretariat has revealed a major impediment preventing ARD from achieving its potential to improve livelihoods – particularly those of the poor. This impediment results from the fact that ARD relies on the linear research–extension–adoption approach. To address this challenge, the Secretariat has proposed the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) approach, which draws upon innovation and uses a systems perspective as its organising principle. IAR4D needs to be articulated, tested, and validated to ascertain the conditions under which it works and whether it delivers greater impact than traditional approaches.
The Programme is being implemented at three Pilot Learning Sites (PLS) covering 8 countries in the ASARECA, CORAF/WECARD and SADC-FANR sub-regions. The continental perspective of the Secretariat means that it can design and conduct cross-SRO evaluations of IAR4D. It also means that it can pool data across the continent and so derive lessons and identify best practice and share this knowledge among the SROs. In this way the SSA CP contributes to NSF 5’s function as a knowledge hub for best practice relating to multi-stakeholder ARD approaches.
Exit Strategy
Presently, the SSA CP is a research programme that focuses (i) on delivering international public goods concerned with best practices in relation to multi-stakeholder engagement in the generation and wide-scale adoption of agricultural innovations and (ii) on evaluating whether IAR4D works and is more cost/benefit effective relative to conventional approaches. After satisfactorily answering the above issues, which FARA aims to achieve by the end of the current research phase, the SSA CP will metamorphose into a clearing house for promoting the adoption of IAR4D. It will do this by acting as a platform that will share information and knowledge concerning agricultural innovation and multi-stakeholder (partnership) engagement in ARD.
