By: Benjamin Abugri, Mabel Shu Lum & Abdulrazak Ibrahim
September 2, 2024: Tamale, Ghana, West Africa
From 2nd to 6th September 2024, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Crop Research Institute (CRI), together with some Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) compacts, including the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Africa Rice, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and the World Vegetable Centre (WorldVeg), are organizing a stakeholders’ training of trainers (TOT) workshop in Tamale, Ghana, to strengthen the capacity of Ghanaian stakeholders and enterprises to adopt and scale proven agricultural technologies within the context of Innovation Platforms (IP). TAAT which was launched by the African Development Bank (AfDB) is a major continent-wide initiative designed to boost agricultural productivity across the continent by rapidly delivering proven technologies to millions of farmers. It aims to double crop, livestock, and fish productivity by expanding access to productivity-increasing technologies to more than 40 million smallholder farmers across Africa by 2025.
The workshop aims at enhancing rice, vegetable, soybean and maize production through the strengthening of Innovation Platforms (IP) within the country by bringing together strategic stakeholders who will be trained on IP setting-up and running for downstream dissemination.
Innovation platforms which serve as a space for learning, experience sharing, co-creation, business relationship building, problem solving and decision making also facilitate the promotion of innovations, interactions, and collaboration among multiple actors such as agricultural producers, researchers, extensionists, and policymakers. They are therefore critical in promoting interactions among stakeholders to generate, test, and disseminate innovations that will provide solutions to constraints that hinder the performance of agricultural value chains.
The target audience for the workshop includes rice, vegetables, soybean, and maize value farmers and producers, agricultural extension workers, research institutions, academia, government agencies involved in agriculture, private sector actors and traditional authorities. These stakeholders will be taken through sessions on setting up innovation platforms, monitoring, evaluation and learning, governance, knowledge management and resource mobilization on innovation platforms.
The 5-day workshop which will include presentations, discussions, teamwork, and role playing based on practical cases seeks to achieve the following:
- Empower a network of farmers and stakeholders with the necessary skills in setting-up and running innovation platforms for enhancing the rice, maize, soybean and vegetable value chains in Ghana.
- Establish/support and strengthen rice, soybean, maize, and vegetable Innovation Platforms in Ghana.
- Strengthen the agribusiness capacity of stakeholders within the rice, soybean, maize, and vegetable value chains, especially women and youth, for improved profitability.
- Promote collaboration, knowledge exchange, and innovation within the rice, soybean, maize, and vegetable value chains
The secretary to the Paramount Chief of Gukpegu (Tamale Traditional Council) and Kpalung Zobogu Naa, Mohamed Rashad Abdulai
The secretary to the Paramount Chief of Gukpegu (Tamale Traditional Council) and Kpalung Zobogu Naa, Mohamed Rashad Abdulai welcomed all participants to the Northern regional capital and assured them of the Traditional Council’s support for the event and the promotion of improved agricultural practices in the Northern region.
Dr Issah Sugri, Deputy Director at the CSIR-SARI
In his opening speech, Dr Issah Sugri, Deputy Director at the CSIR-SARI, speaking on behalf of the Director, expressed his gratitude to donors for contributing to food security across all levels and stressed the need for training on access to technology and knowledge building for capacity development and the creation of more learning platforms to increase reach. He also encouraged participants to adapt and implement these technologies to increase productivity for more sustainable livelihoods.
This workshop hosted at the Pioneer Hotel in Tamale, is set to produce a strengthened network of digitally connected farmers empowered with IP thinking through capacity building, knowledge, and experience sharing, enabling farmers to adopt best practices and improve their productivity.
Media Contact: Benjamin Abugri – babugri@faraafrica.org; Tel: 0243513773
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