Capacity Needs Assessment in an agricultural innovation niche partnership

Trainer’s Manual on Facilitating Capacity Needs Assessment

2017, 114 pages

Building on CDAIS training experience, this manual has been developed to support the activities of the CDAIS project.

This manual is a resource for the training of National Innovation Facilitators (NIFs) across all 8 countries. The objective of the training is to strengthen the NIFs’ facilitation skills and their ability to carry out Capacity Needs Assessments (CNAs) in agricultural innovation niche partnerships.

• The materials were prepared in English by a CDAIS working group comprising staff of the various CDAIS implementing partners from Agrinatura and FAO, piloted in one English-speaking country (with valuable input from the CDAIS country team), then made available to the other seven countries. 
• The manual is not a blueprint for use in precisely the same way across all countries, rather it is a general framework and approach around a series of concepts, tools and techniques. 
• The manual was reviewed, modified and adapted to the national context of each country and translated where necessary to an appropriate language before delivery e.g. European languages such as French, Portuguese, Spanish and national languages in the 8 pilot countries.
• Elements of the manual such as the facilitation tools may also be useful in other contexts and the modular design allows for parts of it to be extracted and adapted for use as necessary.

Here you can see the manual: http://cdais.net/2017/07/24/discover-the-trainers-manual/

In the current global overview of CDAIS report, CDAIS is sharing the approaches used and lessons learnt from these pilot countries. We are excited to experience seeds of change not just with our national partners but also within institutions and organizations at Global and European level.

Background:

The European Commission is financially supporting a project to strengthen capacities to innovate in Africa, Asia and Central America. The project is officially called the capacity development for agricultural innovation systems (CDAIS). It is being implemented jointly by Agrinatura, FAO and national partners in the 8 pilot countries (Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos and Rwanda). CDAIS has supported the development of the common framework on agricultural innovation systems through the Tropical Agricultural Platform. The common framework advocates on the importance of the functional capacities in agriculture innovations.