Addis Next steps

Sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems to improve food security and farm income diversification in the Ethiopian highlands Project Design Workshop 30 January - 2 February 2012, Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Next steps

This workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to both learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project (days 1 and 2) and for the core project team to finalize the project details (days 3 and 4).

We have come a long way:

We have developed goals, purpose, objectives, outcomes, assumptions;
We have worked on gaps (comms, gender, nutrition);
We have a site selection for the short term and a draft process for the longer term;
We have some outputs - but a lot of work needs to be done there;
Still some work to do on outcomes: outcomes for who? (still need to be specified);
Assumptions need to be fitted into the big picture;
We haven't really come to a name (though a lot of people like RISING and ARISING/Africa rising).

What's missing or else?

We need to include (research) process documentation back on the menu;
The government ownership: how is it going to be stimulated? At what stage? --> link up with Red FS, stakeholder meeting etc.

Feedback: What is innovative about this project?

Focusing on the farm scale is great;
Silo thinking (even within USAid) between NRM and agriculture is challenged by this project. The M&E platform, the multiple scales etc. are innovative;
It's innovative in its concepts and aspirations. We have a way to go to achieve that innovation e.g. need to beef up the nutrition side, but we are on the right direction;
I like the farm focus, integration, system, even though indeed nutrition etc. need to be beefed up. From a CG point of view it's great that many CG centers are together!
The intent here is innovative but there's a tendency to go back to old patterns;
It remains to be seen if we'll put in action our intent;
I have some caveats: we try to learn lessons from other initiatives e.g. SIMLESA - I like the principle of 'you come together you get money' - but we have a very low participation from the national institutions and I'm worried about early wins by September 2012.
Generally a project tries to do too much and achieves little. This project is doing much to achieve more;
We have discussed lots of activities but not yet the budget;
What doesn't make it so innovative: we have a lot of good things on the table but in Africa we are yet to get that recipe that will get the farmers excited. Without that, there is not much hope;
I'm happy that nutrition is integrated at early design stage;
I don't have a comparison with this project. This type of arrangement might be occurring for many years but it seems not;
Is it a truly innovative project? In the 1980's I worked on projects with multi-donors and gov'ts etc. integrating a lot of components - this project is retro-innovative and it could learn from those past projects about what works or not;
There are a few things that I expected but didn't happen: a) there should be lots of room for learning; b) What matters is what to achieve but what you leave behind, for which you need to involve national programs, develop capacities etc. (it wasn't mentioned);
How do you bring together all the components?
On an innovation scale from 1 to 10 we are on a 4, we need to break the institutional barriers etc. I like the pathway approach and Bruno's graph. I like it's clearly a research project but we are proposing a mix but what's missing is complex system analysis. We need to work on multiple interventions. In Tanzania we need to give more thinking into complex systems;
The multitude of CG centers is innovative. The participation of the audience was good;
Good CG cooperation a la CRP. Farm level work is not so innovative (for livestock we always do so). A lot of theory but not much practice yet;
It's potentially innovative but innovation will come from structures to work cooperatively;
A lot of innovation is still potential but one of the opportunities is the question about the comprehensive understanding on the analytical framework to go hand in hand with scientific research;
In many discussions we mentioned that social science is important and we should change our typical approach, look at different approaches to have a better impact. There's potential and we can work on it.
The lack of tree focus was not innovative but now that it's back on the menu this is innovative.