Addis Reminder about the Ghana lessons and the road to Dar-es-Salaam

From africa-rising-wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

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

The road from Tamale to Dar-es-Salaam

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).

Presentation by Jerry Glover:

  • In West Africa, coordination was not the biggest issue; rather, the issue was the integration with various projects;
  • In Mali and Ghana, the project folks are working on the farm scale;
  • Issue here: standardization vs. flexibility; Good to keep flexible and attuned to regional needs but we also need to coordinate globally;
  • Scale is critical. Food security is national and regional, gender issues at household level etc. If we could design the research at those scales across research and development would be great;
  • Designing research will take months - that was a conscious decision in Tamale - we need to take into account the research design of each region; let's first think about a process to design the research;
  • Today we have to think about integration of the components in the research plans;
  • We need to be cautious about supply-side research;
  • Maybe part of the research requires additional baseline, household survey information - this was in the original ideas for the project and the IFPRI inputs to it;
  • Let's look at the demand: sought research outcomes from other projects;
  • At the end of the Tamale workshop we didn't have anything specific but came up with a series of compelling points e.g. in the north West of Ghana there's a CRSP project, a national initiative, collaboration between CG centers - it was straightforward for this site.
  • As we select these anchor sites, we'll also do a more thorough inventory of activities and initiatives to feed into that work;
  • In West Africa, there was an agreement that those sites would be a basis for site selection but would have to be double-checked with ???
  • Q: Will there be an attempt to summarise and check the relevance of the 70+ projects we have highlighted? --> I think so and we'll attempt to continue mapping activities and others (e.g. AGP woredas).
  • Q: I thought the inventory of projects would be immediately useful because it is relevant to look at one could offer to the other and use this as an input for site selection. This project could be about contracting other projects where there is a better capacity and comparative advantage. --> That leads to the early win discussion. Use components' research projects at plot scale and combine with field scale and farmer scale etc. In the early win section, we identified some projects that could be enhanced.
  • Q: wasn't it a problem to integrate crop and livestock in West Africa? --> it is but it was even more complicated to have cross-country integration.
  • On cross-country integration, in SLP we have some experience. It took us a year to develop a strong dataset harmonised across regions and working team but it was well worth the investment;
  • Something else that we came up with in Ghana is a sort of framework for integration;
  • Finally we also came up with work plans, timelines, people that will take part to (research design, cross-country coordination etc.) committees - it's a fairly detailed timeline that we developed in 1.5h on day 4.
  • The overall goal was also defined in West Africa and the project objectives and outcomes were also refined.
  • On the early wins: Early win impact, early wins in terms of site selection/research design etc.

One type is impact Another type of early win is to inform your thinking about the project design etc. e.g. it would be interesting to learn from other projects;

  • We could also call these early wins quick/early learning experiences? --> Yes we can think about early learning and early impact;
  • About Dar-es-Salaam, the challenge will be greater than in West Africa because 2 regions, 5 USAid missions, over 100 people for the first 2 days and 70 people for the next 2 days. The more we can prepare for that, the better.
Retrieved from "https://africa-rising-wiki.net/index.php?title=Addis_Reminder_about_the_Ghana_lessons_and_the_road_to_Dar-es-Salaam&oldid=85"