GFAR meeting at FARA@15

29 November 2014. Johannesburg. Better futures: transforming agricultural innovation pathways for results. The GCARD Roadmap identified decades of chronic under-investment in Agricultural Research for Development systems around the world as a major barrier to development. A very significant increase is required if AR4D systems are to deliver the global changes required. Government commitments must lead these processes.

GFAR in partnership with IFAD, FAO and national and regional bodies around the world are catalysing innovative processes to strengthen national agricultural research and innovation systems.

A new international facility was proposed, integrating financial and technical support to establish much needed capacities in agricultural innovation systems, to a research agenda that is demanded and driven by farmers and rural communities.

Working groups discussed the following questions:

1. How is demand expressed and by whom?
2. How to integrate within innovation pathways?
3. How to implement innovation platforms? What lessons have been learnt from implementing innovation platforms?
4. How to mobilize and integrate resources through the investment facility?
5. How can external institutions support African-led processes?

The meeting was also an opportunity to present the Tropical Agricultural Platform.

• GFAR supports, promotes and facilitates the Tropical Agricultural Platform, a G20 initiative, as one of the primary activity in Institutional capacity development. TAP facilitates more effective and streamlined capacity development interventions in innovation systems in tropical agriculture. TAP was created to focus specifically on capacity development in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), more than 90% of which are located at least partly within the Tropics.
• TAP provides a mechanism for all actors to communicate, exchange ideas, knowledge, experiences, and practices, and work in a more coordinated way, learning from each other about capacity development policies and practices that work. Interventions will acknowledge national leadership and ownership and will be aligned with national plans and demands. 
• TAP fosters partnerships and shared visions to steer agricultural innovation along a more coherent path and to arrive at development solutions at scale with lower transaction costs. 
• TAP also works to establish close linkages with relevant existing multi-partner initiatives that promote coherent institutional approaches, such as those being implemented by regional fora and international agencies.