CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR SUPPORT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIPS THAT PROMOTE DEMAND-DRIVEN AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR SUPPORT TO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIPS THAT PROMOTE DEMAND-DRIVEN AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH

PAEPARD invites innovative partnerships to apply for support

The Platform for African-European Partnership on Agricultural Research for Development (PAEPARD) supports the establishment of innovative partnerships of African and European stakeholders that engage in agricultural innovation and collaborative research to address shared challenges and opportunities of the partners involved.

PAEPARD sees agricultural innovation as a process that requires the collective effort of different actors with different roles: 1.       Actors whose demands drive the innovation process and who thus have a direct stake in the results (e.g. producers, processors, traders, retailers) 2.       Actors whose support is needed to make the innovation work (e.g. technical, financial and business support services, policy makers, schools, training centres, universities), including research actors with the knowledge and competencies needed to help the other actors develop new answers to their joint challenge and take informed decisions. 3.       Brokers or innovation-facilitators who bring actors together around a shared challenge or opportunity, facilitate the interactions, negotiations and knowledge sharing between the actors, help level the playing field and strengthen actors’ capacities. A successful innovation process thus requires much more than research. And, for research to contribute to agricultural innovation, it has to be integrated with the innovation process. The researchers and other actors need to continuously share knowledge, learn together and mutually readjust their actions to ensure that results are relevant.

The partnerships that PAEPARD supports aim to conduct joint innovation processes that address shared challenges or opportunities. More specifically, within the context of their innovation process, these partnerships wish to formulate and seek funding for joint agricultural research for development (ARD) activities that support their innovation process. While these research activities will be led by a research partner, the leadership of an innovation process goes beyond the mandate and competence of a research organisation and thus requires that another actor assumes this role.

Aspiring partnerships are invited to apply for support to establish their partnership and formulate collaborative ARD proposals targeted at identified funding opportunities.

Selection criteria

The detailed criteria that will be used to assess the applications are provided in the attached scorecard.  The following are the main criteria:

§  Composition of the partnership: Partnerships should comprise both “non-research partners” (producer organisation, private sector organisation and/or NGO) and “research partners” (research organisations, universities), and both African and European partners. A partnership should have at least one European partner, one African non-research partner and one African research partner. All partners should have an interest in addressing the shared innovation challenge or opportunity.

§  Role of the research and non-research partners: Partners should jointly conduct an innovation process, preferably initiated and led by a non-research partner; the research activities undertaken as part of this innovation process will be led by a competent research partner.

§  Openness to empowerment of non-research partners: Partners should be willing to work with PAEPARD to enable non-research partners to play their expected role.

§  Prospect of obtaining research funding: Partnerships should aim to develop ARD proposals targeting published or expected calls or existing other funding opportunities offered by identified donors.

Support offered

Depending on needs, the successful applicants will benefit from the following support from PAEPARD:

1.      Support for participation in a facilitated “partnership inception workshop”.

2. Support for capacity strengthening, including training of an innovation-facilitator proposed by the partnership.
3. Support to facilitation and coordination of partnerships.

Partnership inception workshops

The objective of the inception workshops is to allow the proposed partners to establish their partnership and to develop an action plan for their innovation process, including clearly agreed principles for working in partnership, and roles, responsibilities and commitments of the partners. These workshops will follow a “learning-by-doing” approach to help partners to learn from each other and acquire competencies, tools and principles for efficient and effective collaboration in a multi-stakeholder innovation partnership. Through these workshops partners will produce the following results: a shared analysis of the challenge identified by the non-research partners; a consensus on what they want to achieve together; an in-depth analysis of the interests of the partners and other actors to be involved in the innovation process, and of their expected roles and responsibilities in the process; an action plan for the joint innovation process and research proposal development; the governance and management mechanisms for the partnership. These workshops are facilitated by PAEPARD partners and/or the innovation-facilitators proposed by the individual partnerships. Facilitators also capitalise on the achievements. Three to four partnerships may take part in each workshop. Workshops are expected to take 6-8 full days. The amount of support from PAEPARD for participation in inception workshops is limited to €6,000 per partnership. This amount includes travel, subsistence and accommodation costs.

Support for capacity strengthening

Selected partnerships will benefit from generic and tailored needs-based capacity strengthening. This includes the learning achieved through the partnership inception workshops, training of the innovation-facilitators proposed by the selected partnerships and coaching of these innovation-facilitators while they  facilitate the interactions, negotiations and knowledge sharing between the partners, help level the playing field and strengthen partners’ and other actors’ capacities. Coaching support is also provided to help partners formulate demand-driven research proposals for submission to their targeted funding window. PAEPARD supports the travel, subsistence and accommodation costs for participation of innovation-facilitators in a training workshop offered by PAEPARD. It also supports the cost of coaching of innovation-facilitators and the coaching of research proposal formulation by PAEPARD partners.

Support to the facilitation and coordination of partnerships

Successful partnerships established through this process will benefit from support from PAEPARD through the training and coaching of their innovation-facilitators. The latter will help facilitate and coordinate the partnerships, provided that the partners provide the resources for this themselves.

Application form

Applicants should use the application form

Deadlines

Applications should be received at the address indicated in the application form no later than 28 January 2011. Applicants will be informed of the result of their application on 18 February 2011.

Inception workshops will be planned in consultation with the successful partnerships and are expected to take place between March and June 2011.

More information

For more information you can visit the PAEPARD website at www.fara-africa.org or www.coleacp.org or contact jmugabe@fara-africa.org or fstepman@fara-africa.org.