Appraising the participation of European partners in the PAEPARD Users-Led Process

In 2011, the Platform for African European Partnership on Agricultural Research for Development (PAEPARD) launched the Users-led Process (ULP) to better articulate users’ needs in a multi-stakeholder research and innovation (R&I) partnership. The ULP comprises six critical steps: (1) Identification of a federating theme; (2) Desk review; (3) Introduction workshop; (4) Multi-stakeholder research question inception workshop; (5) Concept note development; (6) Full proposal development. In this study, we reviewed the evolution of the ULP as implemented by five organisations (EAFF1 , PROPAC2 , ROPPA3 , COLEACP4 , FANRPAN5 ), identified the ULP stage at which European partners become engaged, and evaluated their contribution. The assessment involved the analysis of both secondary and primary data obtained through literature reviews, interviews and online questionnaires, as well as social network analysis. The following is a summary of the lessons learned.