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How can European NGO reorient research towards more demand-driven approach for African family farmers?

Julie Flament, 25 August 2010

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Objective of internal consultations for European NGO’s
Program
Participants
Summary
Support

HOW TO ACHIEVE BALANCED, DEMAND-DRIVEN AND MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL EUROPE-AFRICA PARTNERSHIPS IN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH FOR DEVELOPMENT (ARD)?

The Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires has organized a European NGO consultation on September 22, 2010, in Brussels. About 30 persons participated to the meeting, with a majority of NGO representatives but also with representatives of African farmers organisations, of private sector and of research. The meeting was animated by Mamadou Cissokho, the honorary president of ROPPA and by CSA.

THE REPORT OF THIS CONSULTATION IS AVAILABLE HEREUNDER

Objective of internal consultations for European NGO’s

This first NGO consultation is in the frame of a specific part of the project PAEPARD (work package 1) which aims at improving the participation of civil society in ARD partnerships with Africa and in PAEPARD. The subjacent objective of the European NGO’s participation is, thanks to their experience, providing keys to reorient research towards more demand-driven approach for African family farmers. The aim of the NGO consultations is highlighting constraints and opportunities for more inclusive and balanced partnerships establishment, and elaborating common view of what NGOs should promote into PAEPARD.

Program

The complete program is available here

1. Morning session

This session was dedicated to the sharing of knowledges on the basis of presentations by FO, NGO and researcher’s presentation, and subsequent discussion. The shared experiences focused on 3 topics:
Types of financing : what types of financing mechanisms are necessary in order to support balanced partnerships? See presentation made by Oliver Oliveros (international scientific platform Agropolis).
Mechanisms and types of partnerships: what mechanisms are necessary to implement between stakeholders in order to balance the partnerships? What types of partnerships should be supported? See presentation made by Mariana Wongtschowski (research and advisory group ETC EcoCulture) and by Annick Sezibera (chief executive of Confederation of farmer’s associations for development
in Burundi -CAPAD)
The choice of research topics: which processes is it necessary to establish in order to select priority research topics? Par Djibo Bagna (President Network of Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa-ROPPA) and Stephen Muchiri (chief executive of East African Farmer’s Federation EAFF).

2. Afternoon session

This session focused on the PAEPARD project. The objective was to develop a common understanding of PAEPARD in order for NGO to define their expectations and common objectives related to the PAEPARD project. Moreover, debates provided the opportunity to deepen the topics approached during the morning session.

Participants

The list of participants to this consultation is available here

Summary

The summary of the first consultation of NGOs is now available HERE!

The aim of this document is to summarise the restrictions on and levers for establishing more inclusive, balanced, demand-driven partnerships based on African family farmers’ requirements as identified by the participants in the consultation. This summary, which is based on the presentations of the participants’ experiences and subsequent discussion, is organised around three of the subjects covered during the consultation, namely,
1. conditions for setting up balanced partnerships;
2. fostering the inclusion of farmers’ organisations to make the partnerships demand-driven;
3. NGOs’ roles in reorienting ARD.

We must remind the reader that the consultation process is a continuing, open process. It is thus important to realise that this document is merely a rough draft of the things that the NGOs want to bring to the fore within PAEPARD. It is actually a working paper and the participants are thus asked to add to it any elements that they deem important but were not included in drafting this document or were not covered during the consultation. For this reason, the last part of this document consists of an open questionnaire aimed at collecting the participants’ comments and additions.

An evaluation form on the consultation day’s organisation is also provided HERE to enable us to improve the next consultations.