Friday, 1 May 2009

What are the major benefits of the SCARDA project?

Dr. Stella Ennin (Deputy Director of the Crop Research Institute in Kumasi) sees a lot of - albeit not always intended - benefits related to the many activities of the project on Strenghtening Capacity in Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA). The institutional analysis has forced CRI to think critically on a number of problems and CRI did not wait for SCARDA to start to come up with solutions. The possibility of continental networking is one of the major benefits: information exchange can now be more personal with other ARD actors on the continent which were previously not known. Project reporting should be able to capture unintended benefits like email exchange between the SCARDA partners on other funding opportunities. Dr. Stella Ennin heard of the African Women in Agricultural Research for Development (AWARD) program thanks to SCARDA information exchange and finally 3 CRI students benefited from this program. The SCARDA network has also given Dr. Ennin the opportunity to write and submit a research paper.

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