Pct48
Africa RISING PCT #48
23 May 2022
MS TEAMS
Present
- Bernard Vanlauwe (BV) - Chair
- Siboniso Moyo (SM)
- Zachary Stewart (ZS)
- Fred Kizito (FK)
- Carlo Azzari (CA)
- Peter Thorne (PT)
- Jonathan Odhong' (JO) – Secretary
Apologies
- Jerry Glover (JG)
Agenda
- Follow-up action points from previous PCT meeting
- Program-wide close-out event for Africa RISING [Read some further brainstorming on this by JO, FK, CA, and PT here: https://africa-rising-wiki.net/2022closeoutbrainstoming]
- Updates EiA, SI-MFS inception meetings
- BV: Welcome to the meeting colleagues. We have three agenda items that were shared via Email. Jonathan, please run us through the minutes of the previous meeting.
- JO: Okay. I will just go through the action points and not the details of each discussion
Follow-up action points from previous PCT meeting
- Action point 1: BV to follow up with Christian Thierfelder, Francis Muthoni, and others involved in the RIIs about synergies and work transitions between AR and the initiatives. Report back at the next PCT meet.
- Update by BV: I reached out to Muthoni and Thierfelder who are both part of the East and Southern Africa Regional Initiative (UU). From the feedback received, it seems that some Africa RISING investments may actually fall through the cracks of the initiatives.
- Response by PT: There will definitely be parts of the Africa RISING work that will not continue. I think perhaps we should have a more pragmatic approach and really kind of look at where we can ensure that things continue. So for example, in Ethiopia, we've been discussing quite a bit about continuation of some of those sites that we had. One out of the four sites we had is under semi-civil war conditions. However, there’s definitely an interest amongst Africa RISING partners to continue the other three. Some of those Africa RISING partners are also continuing in the SI-MFS Initiative.
- BV: Colleagues, not just Peter, this is all good feedback. But you know at one time this whole discussion is not relevant anymore because the initiatives will go into operation, and it becomes totally irrelevant. So my suggestion is that we should have a detailed analysis of all the ongoing activities from each project and where/which initiative (s) have taken it up? From the beginning we always said that it is not only SI-MFS that will take up Africa RISING work. So the analysis would have elements about – what are the ongoing activities? where would they fit? And those that don't fit, how critical are they? And in terms of some dropping through the cracks how much collateral damage do we encounter?
- PT: We have done some of that analysis Bernard and fed it into the SI-MFS planning stages. I will restrict myself to SI-MFS at the moment because that's the one that I've had any contact with. Some of the current activities under Africa RISING simply don't fit into the initiatives and there are a number of reasons for that. It will be tougher to manage the Cross Center partnerships in the initiatives because of the way the funding's been allocated and I think it will be much tougher to continue with the Africa RISING kind of research and development approach although I suspect that is not a problem that is restricted to one initiative only.
- FK: I was Just contemplating about what you were both discussing, and I've noticed that we had this discussion around April this year where we were looking at activities to ensure that we don't leave things behind from the context of both Sustainable Intensification and Excellence in Agronomy. So, we have identified specific indicators within activities that can be applied at the one CGIAR level to integrate this knowledge products at the onset and the analysis that Bernard was talking about. I have done that for both the ESA and West Africa. We haven't included the Ethiopia bit, but we need to sit with Peter and see which specific research activities contribute or align or link with the two initiatives – EiA and SI-MFS. The merit behind this was to ensure that, OK, are we looking at the strength and potential areas that could be low hanging fruits that we can then, you know, leverage from on both initiatives and I'm happy to share this. I was going to use this as a steppingstone for the discussion that Bernard was talking about, you know, including Muthoni and Christian Thierfelder.
- SM: I am wondering whether there is still a window to influence/ shape the initiatives activities?
- CA: Let's not only look at SI-MFS as benefiting from Africa RISING effort, because I've been in at least three kick-off meetings for different initiatives where Africa RISING was cited multiple times, so I think we need to close out the project in a way that that the lessons learned are well distilled and can inform not only SI-MFS, but also every other initiative. So yeah, I think that's very important. For example, nature Plus is well aware Africa RISING.
- BV: So, from what I hear it seems that we will not be able to redirect initiatives at this stage, either in terms of countries, in terms of approaches for scaling or in terms of content. If that is correct, then I think we need to move just to the close out event discussions.
- FK: I look at it differently - from the context of a closeout, but also looking at it from the context of strengthening some of those things that are really worked well from the context of different thematic areas like livestock, vegetables, but also stressing sustainable intensification. So, what I am proposing is that we could develop a programmatic analysis (including Ethiopia) and then try to feed those into the initiatives. It may be easier to do in the SI-MFS, but not sure how it would play out in the others.
Action: FK, PT to collaborate with Chief Scientists to do a program-wide analysis of ongoing activities and how/which initiatives could take them up. Focus on high value activities [not in terms of cost, but high value in terms of benefit for beneficiaries]. Target is to have this done before the second quarter where the initiatives are likely to make budget adjustments [June for EiA and August for SI-MFS]. Output document could be discussed at the next PCT.
Program-wide close-out event for Africa RISING
- JO: We had a brainstorm together with FK, CA, and PT. Our thoughts are listed out here: https://africa-rising-wiki.net/2022closeoutbrainstoming.
- Key points:
- Three-day event, hybrid in nature, held at the end of October.
- Two cadres of target audiences - internal audiences who are mostly the implementing partners, kind of the people who are closely involved with the project. And external audiences (broader CGIAR community, donors and development partners).
- Day 1 and 2 of the meeting will have a more internal focus - the learnings from the program also select project level research outputs without getting into the granular details.
- Day 3 of the meeting would focus on the external audiences with more higher level outputs and discussions and bigger picture strategic messages. Also some structured discussions about how to move forward key outputs from Africa RISING.
- Aim for highly interactive sessions.
- Some topics: the broader implication of SI as an approach agricultural research and development, partnerships, data and monitoring experiences, ex-ante analysis and return on investments.
Action: JO to refine the ideas generated during the brainstorm into a proposed concept for the meeting and circulate to PCT members and the Chief Scientists for comment.
Updates EiA, SI-MFS inception meetings
- JO: The SI-MFS inception meeting is coming up next week (31 May – 2 June). We expect 40 – 45 Participants at the meeting which will be held at the ILRI Campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting is mainly focused on the front-end planning for the Initiative.
- FK (in addition to JO summary above): The meeting will also be a jump start for the other sub-launches within the focal countries where we'll have deeper dive sessions with other partners on agreed activities for implementation.
- BV: For EiA we had an implementation workshop in Nairobi on 20 - 22 April. We had about 90 participants at the event. During the meeting we noted that there arte still a lot of pending questions that we still have to address. There is a workshop report draft that I can share with all of you. I have just seen the draft today.
- SM: Just in addition to the update about launches, at ILRI there is a discussion/plan to have a common launch for all the livestock-based initiatives because we feel this also provides an opportunity to tell a story together. I will keep you informed on progress with that plan.
