Overview of N2Africa research for development platforms in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana

Edward Baars

Context and platform

background Activities will focus on cowpea, groundnut and soybean in Ghana and Nigeria, on common bean, cowpea, groundnut and soybean in Tanzania and Uganda, and on common bean, soybean, chickpea and faba bean in Ethiopia.

Opportunities and constraints Opportunities: Bring various levels of expertise and interdependent areas of interest together to improve on key aspects of a particular Industry (crop) as well as cross cutting issues between Industries. Constraints: Prior consent from key decision makers is needed Issues that can obstruct the functioning of the platform are lack of focus, preparatory work, people pursuing (only) own agendas Constraints can be addressed to follow up on personal levels and meet when the time is ripe to share relevant information – findings that can benefit the members. Structural issues that may need to be addressed to ensure platform sustainability is trust and compatibility of members.

Pictures

Conclusions and ways forward Overall platform performance will be enhanced if meetings

are short, sweet, well prepared for the right target audience

with prior basic consent of key decision makers that see the

clear benefit to collaborate, improve on focused issues.

The support needed to sustain or enhance the effectiveness

of the platform is a task force designated to a platform that

keeps itself well informed at all levels and cross Industries,

countries and themes, and meets participants individually.

Platform progress Platform initiation for N2Africa Phase-II expected in May 2014, so far project launch workshops brought potential members together for the 5 countries, no Phase-II meetings so far as the project was launched from Feb-March 2014.

Platform facilitation and

learning Key bottlenecks in terms of

facilitating the platform is bringing

the right blend of decision makers

together and to ensure follow-up

on action points and next meetings

Documentation is via minutes,

sharing of presentations and

progress before a next meeting

The platform is able to steer

research/ development/ policy

agendas when sufficient prior

consultation on individual -

informal level is taken, no surprises

Edward Baars

e.baars@cgiar.org ● IITA, Nigeria.

Prepared for a capacity development workshop of the

CGIAR Research Program on Humidtropics, Nairobi, 29 April – 2 May 2014

http://humidtropics.cgiar.org/

This document is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution –Non commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License April 2014

April- May 2014

Platform characteristics Research for development, Technology

Adaptation & Adoption, Dissemination and

Public Private Partnership platform.

Farmers, Traders, Processors, Agro-Input

Dealers - Manufacturers, Seed Companies

Service Providers (ICT), Research,

Government Institutions , NGOs, Interest

Groups and other Development Partners

The platforms are operating at national,

regional and provincial levels, led by

Industry specific Interest groups and

facilitated by N2Africa or NGOs, co-funded

by the interest groups (Associations)