In 2012, the Food Systems Innovation (FSI) initiative was set up between four Australian organisations working to improve the impact of agriculture and food security programs in the Indo-Pacific region. The author was assigned to facilitate a stream of work in the partnership, working as an internal partnership broker in one of the four partner organisations, the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Partnership brokering is needed to work out new ways of organising food systems that treat agricultural smallholders as a resource and opportunity rather than a problem or distraction. This is because food systems are demanding innovation in the way they are organised. This is a matter of transforming stakeholders into partners in order to reconfigure food systems to operate differently, rather than just operate more efficiently. Fundamental systemic changes are needed as our contemporary food system is failing to deliver the food we increasingly demand.
Successful cases of innovation invariably demonstrate a range of partnerships, alliances and network-like arrangements that connect together knowledge users, knowledge producers and others involved in enabling innovation in the market, policy and civil society arenas. With this comes the realisation that public agricultural research needs to strengthen links to a wider set of players from the private and civil society sectors and, of course, farmers themselves. Public agricultural extension services have traditionally played the role of linking farmers to technology.
TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was selected as Recipient Organization by FAO to facilitate TAP implementation in Africa. This is mainly due to its position as the umbrella organization bringing together and forming coalitions of major regional stakeholders in agricultural research and development.
The main goal of the study is to quantify the effects of a) change in nitrogen fertilization rate, b) adjustment of sowing date, c) implementation of new cultivars, and d) supplementary irrigation on maize cropping systems across six African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. For this purpose, 30 years (1980-2010) of climate data are used as well as soil and management information obtained from global datasets at 0.5° x 0.5° spatial resolution.
The study analyzes the current state of Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) in Africa and presents its challenges and opportunities. A review of the ATVET in selected Sub-Saharan Africa countries shows that there are far too few training opportunities for young people and that often, the training offered does not match the needs of the private sector and of local administrations. ATVET trainings focus primarily on production skills and on producers themselves with
The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.
This article applies a historical analysis of the progressive development and complexity of Malawi’s diary innovation system through phased emphasis on technological, organizational and institutional development to illustrate the centrality of smallholder dairy farmers in the innovation system. A social network analysis is applied to assess the influence of smallholder farmers on other actors. The existence and growth of the diary innovation system in Malawi is founded on the resilience of smallholder dairy farmers to produce milk.
PAEPARD supports/facilitates three aflatoxin-related research consortia: (a) Stemming aflatoxin pre- and post-harvest waste in the groundnut value chain in Malawi and Zambia; (b) Developing strategies to reduce fungal toxins contamination for improved food sufficiency, nutrition and incomes along the maize value chain in the arid and semi-arid lands of Eastern Kenya; and (c) Developing feed management protocols for dairy farmers in high rainfall areas in Kenya.
PAEPARD appuie et assiste trois consortiums de recherche liés à l’aflatoxine dans leur travail destiné à : (a) éradiquer les déchets de l’aflatoxine avant et après les récoltes dans la filière arachide au Malawi et en Zambie ; (b) développer des stratégies visant à réduire la contamination par des toxines fongiques pour améliorer l’approvisionnement alimentaire, la nutrition et les revenus le long de la filière maïs dans les zones arides et semi-arides de l’est du Kenya ; et (c) développer des protocoles de gestion des aliments du bétail pour les producteurs laitiers dans les zones à forte