LEAP-Agri Group of Funders meeting

19-20 April 2018. The Hague. LEAP-Agri Group of Funders meeting. LEAP-Agri is an African Union – European Union partnership between 30 partners from 19 European and African countries. 

The meeting was prepared by the managers of LEAP-Agri (ANR and MOEST) in collaboration with the Call Secretariat (NWO-WOTRO, NRF and DLR-PT).

One of the objectives of this meeting was to select the final projects which were submitted under the the LEAP-Agri Call 2017 on 'African European collaborative research on Sustainable Agriculture and Aquaculture and on Food and Nutrition Security' (which close 15 June 2017).

LEAP-Agri Group of Funders meeting - Information on procedures

Full proposal stage preparation

• The following main steps have been taken, with the 85 proposals received: 
• The 83 eligible proposals have been sent to three reviewers each; 
• The main applicants had the opportunity to write a rebuttal on the reviews; 
• The members of the independent International Review Panel (IRP) were asked to prepare a report on around 14 proposals assigned to them (pre-assessment with scoring). 
• The IRP based a report on a weighing of a proposal, the three review reports and the rebuttal. IRP meeting 16-18 April 
• The panel consisted of 20 members and additionally two technical co-chairs. During the IRP meeting also the general management of LEAP-Agri was present as well as an independent observer (required by the EC).

Group of Funders Meeting

During the GF meeting the funders were informed in a calculation table displayed on a screen visible for the plenary about the outcome of the IRP meeting, and what this means for the financing of the projects. Ranking was based upon equal weighing of the three main criteria: 1) Excellence of the proposal 2) Expected impact of the project 3) Quality and efficiency of the implementation.

Hans-Joerg Lutzeyer from EC presenting
FNSSA HPLD Working group activities

Steps after the GF meeting 

LEAP-Agri coordinator Maurice Héral
presenting on going activities on food security 

• Some funders may need one week to settle additional funding; 
• After the final selection of projects to be funded, each Funding Agency will fill the Annex 7 « Commitment on the Availability of Funds » and sign it electronically (after the EC opens the portal); 
• The CS will provide an excel file with information to each funder; 
• With a mandatory starting date before the end of August 2018, each funder needs to start the procedure within their own organization as soon as possible; 
• Each funder needs to write an allocation letter for their financing part of a project, before the ultimate starting date of a project

Funding Agencies should have to start funding the concerned applicants in the co-funded projects with their own budget, and before having received EC funds. 

Most of the Funding Agency will not transfer to the applicants the total requested budget at the beginning of the project life, but only a part of this budget. This would allow normally Funding Agencies to start the co-funding of “their” applicants for all concerned co-funded projects with their own budget.