These guidelines are produced by FAO as part of the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems Project (CDAIS). The objective of this document is provide practical guidelines to implement marketplace events to strengthen agricultural innovation. A marketplace is an event organized to facilitate matching of demand and supply and to promote learning, sharing and exchanging of information, knowledge and practical experience on specific topics.

The experiences shared in this book of Conversations of Change capture the outcomes of three years’ work conducted by the eight CDAIS country teams from Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos and Rwanda. Collected between January and March 2019, they provide insights and perspectives of different actors engaged in the different capacity strengthening processes, within individuals and innovation niche partnerships, and at organisational and national level.

This book collects 24 stories of change from the EU-funded CDAIS project. Launched in 2015, the overall objective of CDAIS is to make agricultural innovation systems more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers. The stories are about the eight pilot countries - in Africa, Asia and Latin America - in which CDAIS operates. Countries and title of the 24 stories are provided below, with date of last update for each story.

Angola:

01) From farm to agri-business (February 2018)

The brochure summarizes main features and goals of the EU funded CDAIS project, jointly implemented by FAO and AGRINATURA to support the TAP Action Plan.  

The Outcome mapping factsheet provides a series of steps to gather information on the outcomes of the process initiated by capacity development for agricultural innovation. This tool provides an overview of the outcome mapping methodology used for planning and assessing projects/programmes oriented towards change and social transformation. A simplified version (three stages and 10 steps) is proposed, based on the original IDRC methodology and experiences from the application in the CDAIS project.

This tool  helps the design of comprehensive capacity development interventions aimed at strengthening mainly functional capacities. The purpose of this tool is to  provide an overview of the different options in terms of capacity development modalities that an innovation partnership can consider while developing the action plan.

These guidelines have been elaborated by the CDAIS project to organize policy consultations at innovation partnership level. They can be used by project teams (e.g. project managers, facilitators, policy consultants) to plan and conduct workshops with representatives of the innovation partnership to discuss policy related issues that hinder the innovation process in a particular partnership.

"Many topics in the participatory training were eye openers. I have learned a good number of techniques that will help me not only in project activities but also in my personal life. And I believe that the acquired skills and knowledge will help me support effective collaboration and dynamic stakeholder networks and local agribusiness partnerships and will help to generate new knowledge by fostering collective learning and joint experimentation.”

Flyer on CDAIS in Bangladesh.