Regional Workshop of African and European Research Area programme managers for agriculture research for development

11-13 Oct 2011 Uganda. ERA-ARD II together with FARA co-organized a workshop of the African and European Research Area programme managers for agriculture research for development (ARD).

The concept was to create a working mechanism for a real demand-driven co-ordination and alignment of joint research and training activities in Sub-Saharan Africa region especially in developing human and institutional capacities.

The aim of the workshops was to identify regional research demand expressed by African ARD stakeholders and to match it with the available resources from the European programs. The workshops established an integrated approach of programming from various sources to contribute to an effective research, training and education in Africa.

The outcome of the workshop are:

• identification of priority themes that could be supported using available resources from Africa and Europe. A call for proposals will be launched in the following months. Further details are described in the below concept note, "Sub Sahara Africa - Regional ARD-Alliances".
• experts/stakeholders present their concepts on specific aspects of "Sustainable agricultural intensification through increased productivity and commodity value of crops". 
• This was followed by an exchange of views with government official delegates and European program managers.

Uganda Workshop - Background (pdf)

Uganda Workshop - Agenda (pdf)

This film is about the RUNetwork question and answer service for farmers in Africa.

It describes how vouchers are used to esablish a constructive dialogue between the farming and the scientific community. It is not just farmers that get answers from science to solve their production problems but also science that gets access to farm level data for a better understanding of the dynamics of local farming systems. Information from farmers about upcoming problems is also used for early warning. The approach was successfuly tested in 5 different countries and scaled up to 14 communities all over Uganda. It is presently introduced in another 15 African countries in a collaborative project between the forum for agricultural research in Africa (FARA) and the ferderal office for agriculture and food (BLE Germany) with financial support from the Afircan development Bank.

ERA-ARD kick-off meeting

The ERA-ARD II project was officially kicked-off with Consortium and Steering Committee meetings on 11-12 November 2010 in The Hague, The Netherlands. During this kick-off, project partners were able to network, interact with their European counterparts, Work Package leaders and others.

The Dutch coordination team hosted this meeting, which was dedicated to ensuring that detailed work plans were agreed towards full delivery of the ERA-ARD goals. Due attention was given to the general management of this ERA-Net in the context of national and European research policies for global food security.

Achievements of ERA ARD I are:

• ERA-ARD provided a shared vision and a strategic agenda on ARD in Europe
• ERA-ARD provided an analysis of collaboration models to the implementation of joint and transnational activities ;
• ERA-ARD realised increased involvement of Southern partners through the establishment of a Southern Advisory Group ERA-ARD implemented a transnational call on “Bioenergy”.

The areas for improvement are:

• Enlargement of the consortium by integrating new Countries (Portugal, Turkey, Finland, etc.).
• Expand joint and transnational activities initiated during ERA-ARD I
• Realise joint activities in the Thematic fields: Capacity development, Agri-Food Chain Security and Food & Energy , also related to climate change
• Involve the end users of the European ARD programmes in the design and implementation of joint and transnational activities
• Expend the Southern Advisory Group to include stakeholders from all continents

Members of the ERA-ARD II consortium are:

- Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality – Department of Knowledge, Netherlands
- Bundesministerium für Land- u Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt u Wasserwirtschaft – Division on International Cooperation for Food and Development, Austria
- Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, Germany
- Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, France
- Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France
- Instituto nacional de investigación y tecnología agraria y alimentaria, Spain
- Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affair, General Directorate of Agricultural Research, Turkey
- Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey
- Instituto Nacional de Recursos Biológicos, I.P., Portugal
- Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry - Department of General Affairs, Finland
- Lietuvos Respublikos Zemės Ukio Ministerija – Rural Development Department. Lithuania
- Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Belgium – DGDC, Belgium
- Istituto Agronomico per l’Oltremare, Italy
- Földmüvelésügyi és Vidékfejlesztési Minisztérium - Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development – Dpt for Natural Resources, Hungary
- Federal department of Foreign Affairs/Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation – Department for Global Cooperation, Global Programme Food Security, Switzerland
- Department for International Development – Central Research Department, UK
- Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Department for Technical Advisory Services, Denmark

Announcement: Dialogue between Europe and its Southern partners

17th December 2009, Brussels . ERA-ARD, SCAR and EIARD, with a special support of CIRAD, the French agricultural research centre for international development, the ERA-ARD Coordinator, co-organise an international conference entitled: « Dialogue between Europe and its Southern partners on agricultural research and climate change »

This conference aims at facilitating the identification and initiating coordination of European agricultural research programmes for mitigation and adaptation actions to climate change for mutual benefit of Europe and its Southern partners. Conference objectives:

The conference will focus on three major themes:

• What are the challenges and why a dialogue between Europe and its Southern partners is necessary?
• Initial mapping of on-going and planned agricultural research programmes related to climate change in Europe and the Southern regions.
• Priorities for the future: What are the research priorities and coordination mechanisms to be put in place for reducing the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector?
• What could be the agenda of a European joint programme initiative in this field?

Reference: International Conference ERA-ARD

Tackling hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa

Professor Sir Gordon Conway talks about his work and global efforts to tackle chronic hunger across the world in Imperial College’s podcast. You can access the podcast and the transcript of the interview at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/media/podcasts

The Dutch, are very good on water control and irrigation systems. We've got some very good plant breeding in Britain at various institutions. In France they've got a lot of experience of working on farmer organisations. (...) And the British and some other countries working in Anglophone Africa have got also their own experiences and successes. But they don't talk to each other very much yet. August 2009 podcast transcript Sir Gordon Conway on efforts to tackle chronic hunger across the world

Gordon Conway at the Centre for Environmental Policy in Imperial College London, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is leading a small team to explore the potential for new European partnerships to support agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The team will assess and make recommendations as to how governments, think tanks, NGOs, the research community and the private sector and donors might work in partnership to use their combined expertise and influence to create a more coherent and focused approach to agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The job is to establish who's doing what across Europe in terms of agriculture in development and to find out from Africa what it wants from Europe. It's all about attacking food poverty in Africa and improving agriculture in the region in the face of challenges like climate change, disease and conflict.

ERA-ARD SAG Steering Committee meeting

FARA participated at the ERA-ARD SAG Steering Committee meeting in Madrid, Spain 4-6 February 2008.

ERA-ARD has been formed to establish coherence and collaboration in European ARD. The ERA-NET brings together representatives from a range of stakeholders including various ministries and national public research organisations. With 11 participating countries, ERA-ARD has the critical mass necessary to drive forward the harmonisation and integration of Europe’s ARD effort. Given the existing fragmentation of ARD in Europe, the consortium is taking a pragmatic step-by-step approach to its work, starting with basic information exchange and leading up to transnational activity. The Southern Advisory Group (SAG) under the current phase of the ERA-ARD is operational until end June 2009.

The meeting confirmed ERA-ARD will focus on three areas namely, food safety, capacity development and food and energy. Capacity development (CD) should link to existing national and regional initiatives that are identified by FARA and RUFORUM. CD should be linked to policy making and monitoring and evaluation. It should not reinvent the wheel, rather build on successful stories and inter-active learning. ERA-ARD should build on existing initiatives and harmonize actions of EU member states.