PAEPARD side events @ RUFORUM Biennial Conference

14-16 October 2016. Several pre-conference events were held @ the RUFORUM Biennial
Conference. PAEPARD organised:

1. A training workshop Processes and Practices in multi-stakeholder partnerships in ARD, 
2. A workshop on monitoring and evaluation
3. A workshop on the improvement of the use of the Open Source OSIRIS (Online System to Improve Relationships by Information Sharing
4. A Side Event on Retrospective and prospective of PAEPARD write-shops under the capacity building strategy of PAEPARD 
5. A Side Event on Linking African agricultural universities to research-users through the multistakeholder partnerships

Training workshop Processes and Practices in multi-stakeholder partnerships in ARD:

This side-event was part of Work Package Capacities Work Plan for Year 7 under the PAEPARD implementation Plan. The overall aim of the side-event was to enable the members of ULP and consortia funded under CRF and ARF better manage projects and document the change process. The meeting offered the opportunity for ULPs, CRF and ARF project teams to engage and network with other actors engaged in ARD and link to other academia in Africa. Agenda:

• Forms and Principles of partnerships within PAEPARD
• Mapping partnership development of consortia – Group Work and review
• Steps in the change process
• Analysis, identifying pathways to innovation and markers of change
• Identifying principles/assumptions of the change process
• Outlining a learning agenda for documentation of the change process
• Project cycle management
• Stakeholder analysis
• Risk management
• Financial management
• Designing and implementing a project communication strategy

• See Workshop report: Laurens van Veldhuizen. 2016. Summary report. Processes and Practices in multi-stakeholder partnerships in Agricultural Research for Development, Project management, Monitoring and Evaluation.  Royal Tropical Institute, KIT, 16 pages.

Workshop on monitoring and evaluation

The structured monitoring of the implementation of PAEPARD-CRF activities started in FY2015.
The first M&E visit to all the projects was at the beginning of 2015, when the FARA M and E Specialist assisted the teams revise their Results Frameworks (RFs) and establish the baseline values and indicator targets for ease tracking implementation progress. Assessment is made from quarterly technical and financial reports and the once-in-a-year Monitoring visit. 

Objectives

• CRF projects are aligned with the FARA and overall PAEPARD objectives;
• Projects teams effectively manage and deliver the projects on time and within budget;
• Key issues and constraints faced during the implementing period are discussed andappropriately addressed through advice and feedback, and the sharing of templates, best
• practice and lessons learnt;
• Lessons learned are well documented to inform other projects and future FARAprogramming; and,
• Confidence in the projects’ outcomes is maintained and exit strategies are set up early enough.

All the 4 projects have generated (or are likely to generate) impressive outputs. The projects working
with a diverse array of value chain actors have generated high expectations that may neither be satisfied in the current phase, nor achieve a scale that can achieve meaningful impact within the 3-year implementation period within which to generate research technologies and scale them out to end users. Nonetheless,

• Promising results from these projects are being published to showcase the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships. Also other partners are joining some CRF (e.g. Trichoderma) to use their partnership model to scale out some technologies.
• The Soy-bean milk and Soy-bean afitin has officially released the technology for milk production
• The aflatoxin in groundnut in Malawi and Zambia has successfully completed experimental trials and results have been analyzed to be published in peer reviewed papers.
• The indigenous vegetables project in Uganda has generated knowledge on the morphological diversity, biochemical composition and molecular diversity. The indigenous vegetables have shown a wide range of variation phenotypically and are comparatively rich in nutrients. Progress has also been made on identifying and profiling varieties of indigenous vegetables with longer shelf life and processing potential.
• All CRFs have utilized the CRFs small funding as seed money to search for more funding and expand their consortium/network. The soy-bean milk & soy-bean Afitin consortium won an ARF (275,000€); the Trichoderma consortium submitted successfully a project to a call launched by the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and won 185,000€. The Indigenous vegetables team was shortlisted at the first round for a national funding launched by NARO Uganda.

• See further: Jonas Mugabe and Clesensio. 2016. PAEPARD-CRF_Monitoring and Evaluation visit Report, FARA, 36 pages

Workshop on the improvement of the use of the Open Source OSIRIS: all deliverables and consortia agendas have an electronic format and the PAEPARD supported consortia are able to promote their activities on the Web and publish documents or information related to their results.

• Reminder of OSIRIS functionality 
• Consortia feedback experience 
• Practical work from documents provided by consortia 
• Presentations by consortia of their work and discussion 
• Presentation of the publication function on the web 
• Creation of the homepage consortia websites 
• Consortia progress presentation strategy 
• Practice and posted the contents of consortia websites 

• See Workshop report: Thierry Helmer. 2016. Final report of the communication tools Consortia training workshop, CIRAD, 15 pages

Retrospective and prospective of PAEPARD write-shops under the capacity building strategy of PAEPARD

One of the means of building the capacity under PAEPARD is the write-shop to develop proposals responding to calls launched by donors. Around 9 write-shops were organized by PAEPARD since 2011. The documentation (process, proposals developed, awarded proposed) of these write-shops has started in order to share with partners lessons learnt. However, there was need of a feedback from those who participated in the write-shops and partners who did not attend. 

Over the past five years, some 55 concept notes and proposals have been submitted by the consortia supported by PAEPARD. Finally, 11 submitted proposals have been selected for a call organized by a diversity of donors.

A lot of energy is put into the writing and submission of proposals. However, only a few proposals are finally selected for funding. But particularly, for the proposals submitted under the Applied Research Fund (ARF) of the Dutch
WOTRO (science division of the Netherlands Organizations of Scientific Research), the time and money invested in consolidating a consortium and improving on the concept note and proposal writing has paid off. Although in terms of numbers: from the 13 proposals submitted to this Dutch funding opportunity, only four were selected (with nine not selected). However, the number of selected ARD projects submitted by PAEPARD supported consortia is not too bad compared to the success rate one would find in some specific calls for proposals.

• See Workshop report: Laurens van Veldhuizen. 2016. The PAEPARD Write-shop Experiences Side Event at the 5th African Higher Education week. Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 11 pages.
• See further: Lessons learnt from the write-shops (capacity building) (October 2016, 19 pages) Extracts from the Stepman, F. (Ed.) PAEPARD 2016. Brokerage in ARD: from assumptions to reality

Linking African agricultural universities to research-users through the multistakeholder partnerships

During the two calls launched by PAEPARD in 2010 and 2011 many African universities joined other
actors to form the MSP around different value chains. Out of 150 concept notes received from the two calls, 21 were led and submitted by universities from which 6 were selected out of a total of 19 that got PAEPARD support.

Here are four examples of African universities playing an active role in PAEPARD supported
consortia:

1. The University of Abomey-Calavi is engaged in improving a local soybean spicy known as “Afitin”. It is produced by women in rural area of Benin and especially in South and Central of Benin but in non-hygienic conditions which is source of allergies and gastro-intestinal infections. Five MSc students are working from production to commercialization adding value to the product (Afitin). The University of Abomey-Calavi has mobilized its team of microbiologists and food scientists to carry out the research in collaboration with the University of Wageningen and the University of Lisbon.
2. The University of Ghana, through the Crop Science Department and its Forest and Horticultural Crops Research Centre based at Kade in East Region, is involved in a consortium
   
   that in 2011 submitted a concept on Angular Leaf Spot disease of citrus. In 2014, the strategic innovation platform got a support from the Sub-Saharan Challenge Program (SSA CP) to build the capacity of stakeholders in working together. The disease is about to be controlled with the use of the concept of the Innovation Platform (IP) in scaling out the technology developed by scientists of the university of Ghana and other stakeholders including producers. Also the IP has attracted other partners such as
   
   GIZ who are dealing with marketing of citrus and the Fruit Fly project funded by the World Bank via CORAF.
3. The Uganda Christian University (UCU) engages with communities of vegetable producers in Jinja (Central Uganda) and Mbale (Eastern Uganda) on ‘Enhancing nutrition security and incomes through adding value to indigenous vegetables in East and Central Uganda’. Beside the improvement of production, UCU with partners that include Makerere University, a private sector and a local NGO, are searching for technologies – affordable and adoptable by famers - that minimize post-harvest losses and prolong the shelf life which are big challenges in vegetable production and marketing.
4. The Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Burundi (ISABU), a private sector organization (PHYTOLABU) and a European partner (Wallon Centre for Irish Potato Research, Belgian) to create a MSP around «Participatory Development of Irish Potato Technologies and Promotion of Gender and Environmentally-Friendly Innovations in Burundi ». The main activities of the consortium have been the capacity building in high quality potato seeds production, seeds supply and marketing, storage etc.

See further: Mugabe, J.M., Nampala, P. Linking African agricultural universities to research-users through the multistakeholder partnerships: Experience from PAEPARD. RUFORUM Working Document Series (ISSN 1607-9345) No. 14 (1): 421-428.

This side event also had a presentation from: Agrienterprise development as pathway to youth and rural development in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of agrienterprise business prototypes at Egerton University