African parliamentary support for agriculture

African parliamentary support for agriculture. Final Report for the Pilot Programme. Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa. 29 pp.


This is the final report of a pilot programme which investigated how parliamentary agriculture committees can be supported to help to provide better oversight on programmes looking at such things as achieving sustainable agricultural growth, food security and economic empowerment of smallholder farmers. It covered Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.

The programme looked at ways in which agricultural committees can be assisted to develop and implement a strategic approach to support agriculture in their respective countries and constituencies.

The report acknowledges that much more work needs to be done to develop the link between MPs and government agricultural services such as the extension services at constituency level.

It also suggested that any future programme would need to put more emphasis on strengthening (or in some cases establishing) the links within a parliaments; between parliamentary committees and the executive; between different houses of parliament (two of the four countries have or will have senates as well as assemblies); and between parliamentary committees and other stakeholders such as farmers' organizations and research institutions.

DFID backs extra year of RIU activity

Ian Maudlin
RIU Director

A 12-month extension (to June 2012) to the RIU has been agreed with DFID in order to allow certain key activities more time to generate additional knowledge outputs and provide greater and more in depth evidence of impact.

RIU aspires to:

• Strengthen innovation capacity


• Explore patterns of partnerships, alliances or networks that span research, social, economic and policy activity


• Tackle local problems in a global context


• Undertake learning-orientated monitoring, with reorientation of RIU in the light of emerging experience


• Recognize that risk is an unavoidable part of innovation


• Champion governance arrangements that facilitate a pro-poor orientation


• Recognize of the vital role that women play in agriculture


• Be flexible to pursue unexpected but promising outcomes


• Engage at different levels and scales; for example local/global or technical/policy


• Promote new ways of working

RIUtv 
Within the RIU website RIU has its own television channel -RIUtv. This enables RIU to place short, specially-made films throughout the website, wherever they are most relevant. In August 2010 RIUtv News was added to the website, this is a monthly web-cast news bulleting and it is supported by RIU Highlights which is a listing of all the news from RIU. 


RIUradio
RIUradio gives RIU an opportunity to share stories across Africa, where radio is often the most important and powerful medium.

RIUradio works closely with the programme AGFAX produced byWRENmedia and a wide network of journalists. and funded by DFID, to get the messages out to radio stations across Africa. Each month, AGFAX distributes free-of-charge a pack of ready-to-broadcast radio features and interviews covering the latest information and news in farming, agricultural science, and rural development to more than 80 radio stations in Africa. The packs provide an audio interview, transcript and supporting information that the programme maker might need, for example a suggested introduction and closing announcement for each interview, and contacts for further information.

RIU feeds a news story each month to AGFAX. These are produced very cost-effectively by repurposing the audio tracks from RIUtv’s films. The stories are also available as podcasts via the RIU website. 


2011
Climate change

• Cassava - the drought beater
  June 2011 (07:57)

2010
Post-harvest

• Group storage to earn more from maize
  November 2010 (07:05)


• Protecting cowpeas in storage through triple bagging
  October 2010 (06:30)

Livestock

• Jos plateau partnership for animal health
  August 2010 (04.41)


• A business model for village chickens
  July 2010 (07.42)

Fish

• Fast growing fish for farming
  June 2010 (07.42)


• Kenya's one-stop fish farming shop
  March 2011 (05.09)


• Aqua Shops - serving commercial fish-farming
  April 2011 (04.22)

Bio-pesticides

• Interviews with maize farmers in Western Kenya
  March 2010 (05:54)


• New weapons to fight armyworm
  June 2010 (07:50)

Communications

• Interviews with the ShujaazFM team
  April 2010 (06:09)


• RIU Best Bets - win funding to put research into use
  January 2010 (01:12)

Seeds

• Making seed and fertiliser affordable
  February 2010 (04:13)

Farm mechanisation toolkit: Guideline to bundling of demands and supply of mechanised services

This is a practical toolkit [24 pp., available in English and Kiswahili of the Research Into Use Programme (RIU)] aimed at helping smallholder farmers and providers of farm mechanisation services to develop a sustainable system for increasing access to mechanisation.

It describes, step-by-step, how farmers and machinery owners can bundle demands and supply of mechanisation services and benefit from the resultant economies of scale. The guide is designed to help farmers, tractor owners, village, ward, district or regional authorities and other stakeholders in the agricultural system understand and engage in the process and make mechanised services accessible to smallholder farmers.

Identifying Market Opportunities for Rural Smallholder Producers

This new English version of the methodological tool kit developed by CIAT’s Rural Agroenterprise Development Project (Copyright © 2007 Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropicahas / Reprint edition published by Catholic Relief Services, Baltimore, 2008) (109 pages) has been extensively updated based on feedback.

The goal of this work is to enable service providers to empower rural communities with skills to engage more effectively in the marketplace so as to increase their income, their CAPACITY TO INNOVATE and ultimately improve their livelihood options.

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Agricultural Transformation by Innovation (AgTraIn)

AgTraIn

- a world-class Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctoral Programme offered by a consortium of internationally recognised European universities:

• University of Copenhagen, Denmark


• Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain


• Montpellier Supagro, France


• University College of Cork, Ireland


• Universita Degli Studi di Catania, Italy


• Wageningen University, The Netherlands

AgTraIn offers

A fully integrated three-year doctoral programme

Focus on the scientific fields of agricultural development, commercialisation and farmer innovation in developing countries

Emphasis on applied research, joint supervision and mobility periods for students and staff

Joint research with leading research and industry organisations in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America

Attractive EU Fellowships

Call for applications by 1 November 2011

The Call for Applications for Category A and Category B scholarships is open. The deadline is 1 November 2011.

 You will find the 2011 Research Topics and the Application Form  here.Topics and the Application Form  here.

Goat value chain actors in India and Mozambique hold innovation platform meetings

Small-scale goat production and marketing are important sources of livelihood for poor livestock keepers in the arid and semi-arid regions of India and Mozambique.

The Market Opportunities Theme of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is leading a project in collaboration with BAIF Development Research Foundation in India and CARE International, Mozambique towards increasing incomes and food security in a sustainable manner by enhancing pro-poor small ruminant value chains in India and Mozambique.

The project Small ruminant value chains as platforms for reducing poverty and increasing food security in India and Mozambique (imGoats in short), which is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), got underway in February 2011.

It uses an innovation systems approach aimed at transforming informal subsistence-level goat production to a viable, profitable model while preserving community and national resource systems. In addition to goat keepers, project beneficiaries include small-scale traders and providers of inputs and animal health services.

Project partners in India and Mozambique recently facilitated inaugural innovation platform meetings in Inhassoro, Mozambique (May 2011) and Jhadol, Udaipur, India (July 2011). Innovation platforms offer an opportunity for the different actors in the goat value chain to gather and exchange knowledge and share experiences towards improving goat production and marketing processes for the benefit of all.

During the innovation platform meetings, participants shared the challenges and constraints they face during goat production/marketing and discussed possible solutions and priority areas for action towards addressing the constraints.

For more details about the imGoats project and to read the meeting reports, please visit http://imgoats.org or contact Dr Ranjitha Puskur of ILRI (r.puskur @ cgiar.org).