PAEPARD side event at GCARD 3

Participants are adressed by Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, Chief Executive, Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) at the Agricultural Research Centre (ARC) campus for the start of plenary

5-8 April 2016. Johannesburg, South Africa. PAEPARD organised a side event at the Third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD3) Global Event.

CGIAR, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Agricultural Research Council
of South Africa hosted the event. The overall title of GCARD3 was "No One Left Behind: Agri–food Innovation and Research for a Sustainable World".  

Some 500 GCARD3 delegates participated in this event from 83 countries.

Mark Holderness, Executive Secretary, GFAR, 

noted that the Conference has shaped a package 

of tangible actions that “we can proudly take 

to the SDGs review process.”

This event represents the culmination of a two-year regional and national consultation process, which aims to realign research priorities with countries' development needs and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• One outcome of this consultation process is the development of the CGIAR Consortium's Strategic Results Framework. 
• The event brought together stakeholders to confirm commitments to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to discuss emerging applications in agri-food research and innovation. 
• The event  resulted in an understanding of how to achieve sustainable agricultural development in which no one is left behind. 

The Program is based on five key themes which pick up on many issues raised at the national and regional GCARD3 meetings through 2015 and 2016:

1. Scaling up: from research to impact; 
2. Demonstrating results and attracting investment; 
3. Keeping science relevant and future-focused;
4. Sustaining the business of farming, and
5. Ensuring better rural futures

Discussions under the first theme were chaired by Patrick Caron, French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and co-chaired by Judith Francis, Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA). These addressed how to scale up research through improved linkages and learning across the local, national, regional and global levels. Presentations highlighted strategies for achieving scale in research for impact drawing on theories, case studies and tools to facilitate and evaluate impact.

The PAEPARD boot

The second theme was chaired by Thomas Price, GFAR and co-chaired by Dhanush Dinesh, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and focused on experiences from different organizations involved in agricultural research and innovation in showcasing their research results and demonstrating impact.

Under the third theme, which was chaired by Aissétou Yayé, African Network for Agriculture,
Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE), and co-chaired by Wayne Powell and Shoba Sivasankar, CGIAR, the discussions highlighted challenges, perspectives, strategies, solutions and collective actions needed to scale-out individual and institutional capacity development.

The fourth theme, chaired by Jethro Greene, Caribbean Farmers’ Network (CaFAN) and co-chaired by Pamella Thomas, CaFAN, and Naledi Magowe, Brastorne Enterprises, explored how agri-food research and innovation partners across the spectrum of research, education, extension and business
can support each link in the value chain.

Under the fifth theme, which was chaired by Iman El-Kaffass, Independent Consultant, and co-chaired by Courtney Paisley, YPARD, the discussions addressed grassroots and regional perspectives in ensuring better rural futures, with a focus on: milestones, outputs and outcomes; and partnerships and resources needed towards collective action.

On the last day of the Conference, participants adopted the GCARD3 Outcomes Statement, based on key messages and commitments to collective action agreed during the thematic discussions. 

Rémi Kahane (PAEPARD)

Containing 17 collective actions, the Outcomes Statement provides the basis for further action by all GCARD stakeholders in developing their agri-food research and innovations programs and activities to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda). 

Specific commitments include: 

• creating 1,000 additional PhD positions per year in “next-generation, future-relevant agricultural research”; 
• promoting higher-education reform across 100 universities in five continents, combining multi-disciplinary training in agriculture-related sciences with skills in leadership, entrepreneurship, interpersonal relations and team building; 
• developing “culture of impact”; creating a platform to harmonize agriculture-related indicators linked to the SDGs; 
• clustering smallholder farmers to participate more effectively in research and development, and access finance and markets; and establishing foresight platforms to bring together farmers’ organizations in the five regions with research and innovation actors from around the world.

A major outcome of meeting was the GCARD3 Pledge to Sustainable Development. Like the GCARD1 Road Map, it will provide a touchstone for partners across public, private, and civil society sectors in developing their agri-food research and innovations programs and activities to 2030.

The summary of this meeting is now available in PDF format at  and in HTML format 

Side event by PAEPARD

8 April 2016. Side event. The African-European multi-stakeholder demand-driven process in agricultural research for development: Case studies from PAEPARD.

Objectives:

• Profile PAEPARD-supervised projects from the Users Led Process (ULP), the competitive research funds (CRF) and the incentive funds (IF) instruments, and the communication and advocacy strategy (C&A), 
• Advocate for multi-stakeholder partnership funding by using lessons drawn from PAEPARD, 
• Raise the visibility of PAEPARD, the EC and all PAEPARD partners during CGARD3.

Programme:

• Welcome remarks and Side Event introduction, Yemi Akimbamidjo, FARA 
• Originality and overview of the main activities of PAEPARD II ; Jonas Mugabe and Remi Kahane, FARA and and Agrinatura/Cirad 
• Panel discussion on the brokerage role for initiating and boosting ARD between Africa and Europe ; Agrinatura, EAFF, FANRPAN, Nasfam 
• Key lessons learned and messages for donors ; FARA and Agrinatura 

Some comments of the panelists:

The Users' led process (ULP) came to give a direction to PAEPARD after the consultations which were just meetings without much results. Didier Pillot - Agrinatura 

PAEPARD has leveraged the leadership of farmers to sit with research as equal partners and to define a common research agenda based on ours needs. Philip Kiriro - EAFF

PAEPARD a permis aux non-chercheurs de s’approprier le processus de RAD et d’engager les differents acteurs dans un dialogue. Elisabeth Atangana - PROPAC

A lot of lessons on capacity needs have come out from PAEPARD. My hope is that those lessons will influence the university curriculum which should be developed from the needs of the users. Moses Osiru - RUFORUM

PAEPARD is the project that is doing what we have trying to move to: demand driven research by promoting the concept of ULP. It is an applied project of demand driven research. Also PAEPARD has demystified research by integrating the knowledge of users. In the past the knowledge was the monopoly of scientists ignoring the indigenous knowledge which PAEPARD has integrated in the ULP. Irene Frempong - FARA

Related:

Published on 6 Apr 2016. What is #GCARD3, how did we get here, and where are we going?

Published on 9 Apr 2016 A look behind the social reporting and social media bootcamp project at #GCARD3.