On Agricultural Research for development
Platform for Africa-Europe Partnership for Agriculture Research and Development
PAEPARD is an eight-year project financed by the European Commission (80%) and partners' own contributions (20%). Its objective is to facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships between Africa and Europe in the field of agricultural research for development (ARD) with a view to contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As partner, EFARD aims to enhance the mobilization of European ARD stakeholders as well as to improve communication among and between them.
EFARD also plays an important role in policy advocacy for increasing funding to support the engagement of European research actors in agricultural research for development projects
Professor Ben Bennett is the Deputy Director of the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom.
He is a Marketing Economist with a particular interest in postharvest losses and their impact on incomes in developing countries. He has undertaken consultancy and research in over 30 countries working on a wide range of agricultural commodities including cereals and legumes. Ben Bennett is also known for his work on value chain analysis and the economics of Aflatoxin contamination.
In 2014, he began collaborating with the PAEPARD aflatoxin consortium focusing on Stemming Aflatoxin Pre- and Post- Harvest waste in the Groundnut Value Chain
European actors engaged in PAEPARD consortia shared their experience
with EFARD...
Dr. Anton Haverkort is a plant scientist who has dedicated a significant part of his career to research on potatoes. Anton Haverkort started his career in 1975 at the International Potato Center in Peru (CIP), where he worked for more than 10 years to improve potato production through agronomy, breeding and crop protection.
In 2013, he started the collaboration with the consortium on seed potato quality innovations for small scale farmers in Burundi supported by PAEPARD.
Dr. Paul Ingenbleek is associate professor of marketing and works at the Marketing and Consumer Behaviour Group of Wageningen University. His current research focuses on the role of strategic marketing in sustainable development, especially in developing and emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In 2014, he began collaborating with the PAEPARD soybean consortium focusing on Matching grain quality attributes to the requirements of soybean processors in Benin ProSSES
PAEPARD USERS LED PROCESS (ULP)
A participatory collective learning
and owned brokering mechanism
Translate the users’ needs into research questions and identify funding opportunities
5 sub-regional ULP-platforms:
3 led by a farmers’ organization
1 led by a professional organization
1 led by a regional network of organisations linked with the agricultural policy process
The ULP comprises six critical steps :
1-Identification of a Federating Theme
2-Desk review
3- Introduction Workshop
4- Multi-Stakeholder Research Question (MSHRQ) inception workshop
5- Concept note development
6-Full proposal development
Appraising/ Assessing the position of European partners in the PAEPARD Users’-Led Process (ULP)
EFARD reviewed the evolution of the ULP as implemented by the 5 organisations, identified the stage at which European partners become engaged and evaluated their contribution. The assessment involved the analysis of both secondary and primary data obtained through literature reviews, interviews and online questionnaires as well as social network analysis. The following is a summary of lessons learned:
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The ULP has contributed to developing social capital of non-researcher actors
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Building trust between researchers and non-researchers and strengthening the engagement of European and African stakeholders takes time and financial resources.
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There is a mismatch between users’ research priorities and funding streams. EU researchers with no institutional core funding are constrained to engage in all stages of the ULP. Flexibility especially in aligning jointly developed research priorities with the requirements of donors is necessary.
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Knowledge co-creation between research and non-researchers remain constrained by their different perspectives and interests.Time, adequate facilitation and resource allocation are essential to build effective multi-stakeholder African-EU research and innovation partnerships.
PAEPARD Consortia
In 2011, PAEPARD organized two calls for applications to support the development of multi-stakeholder partnerships to promote demand-driven ARD and innovation. From 153 concept notes submitted, 19 were selected to form consortia.
Impacts of PAEPARD Consortia
4 farmer preferred lines of vegetables developed
Over 400 farmers and over 50 schools trained in agronomy
Raised awareness on the importance of indigenous vegetables on human health
Women Processors and researchers have co-created technology that prolongs the shelf life of soybean milk
1500 woman processors were trained
30% increased
of tomato, onion and Irish potato yields
25% increased
of farmers’ incomes
200-4000 farmers
have already been directly or indirectly trained
PAEPARD Policy briefs
For two decades now the problem of aflatoxin has been mainly confined to the research area. A meeting of experts in research and development in Berlin demonstrated that all kinds of actors get mobilized to tackle the problem, but bridging research and development in this field is still challenging due to the complexity of the contamination sources at pre- and post-harvest levels.
Since 2010 PAEPARD has been promoting, through multi-stakeholder partnerships and brokerage between researchers, NGOs extensionists, farmers’ organization representatives and actors of the private sector, innovation processes which create initiatives or add value to existing ones in various value chains...
In its role as a broker, PAEPARD connects different actors with common interests who would rarely interact with one another to share and exchange knowledge. The PAEPARD partnership does so by intervening in a chain of existing brokerage activities.
For example, in the case of the mango industry in West Africa, farmers and researchers concentrated on fruit fly control but had ignored the economic value of the large amount of fruit waste until the cosmetic industry entered the partnership.
Based on the observations of their African colleagues, European researchers have also been able to validate the value of turning locally produced vegetables, soya beans and Trichoderma strains (a soil borne bio-fertilizer and bio-protectant), into new business opportunities...
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