New skills to enhance agricultural innovation

17-22 September 2017. Laos. Participants from eight countries in Africa, Asia and Central America, along with many global partners, held a reflection week to build new skills to enhance agricultural innovation. 

The first ‘pre’ meeting was of the Agrinatura Taskforce, to unravel logistical issues surrounding the management of this very complex project with so many different components. The 3rd CDAIS Global Consultation on the next two days was held at the National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), lead partners

for activities in Laos, to evaluate developments over the past year. This was followed by the Partner Meeting of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) to discuss progress made on applying the common framework and new action plan for 2018-2021. CDAIS project team members played an active role, presenting country case studies, and there was much lively debate. 

After this, the 5th TAP General Assembly agreed on the next steps for finalizing their new action plan and selected a new Steering Committee with Judith Francis from CTA/EFARD as Chair. The

week ended with visits to two of the ‘innovation niche partnerships’ the CDAIS project is working with in Laos, with lots of opportunities for interaction between participants and members of farmer groups producing organic vegetables and beef cattle.

Publications:

• Understanding socio-economic and policy constraints to dairy development in Ethiopia: A coupled functional-structural innovation systems analysis by E.Kekebe (lead NIF for CDAIS in Ethiopia), J.Duncan, L.Klerkx.,I.J.M.de Boer, S.J.Oosting
• How much of the labor in African agriculture is provided by women? by A.Palacios-Lopez, L.Christianensen, T.Kilic
• Not by technology and money alone: the importance of functional capacity strenghtening in agribusiness partnerships, Salm, M., Dugue, M-J., Defoer, T.
• Strengthening capacity for agricultural innovation in Angola
• Développer les capacités pour les systèmes d’innovation agricoles au Burkina Faso 
• Strengthening capacity for agricultural innovation in Ethiopia 
• Strengthening capacity for agricultural innovation in Rwanda