Pct49

Africa RISING PCT #49
30 August 2022
MS TEAMS

Present

1. Siboniso Moyo (SM) - Chair
2. Zachary Stewart (ZS)
3. Fred Kizito (FK)
4. Carlo Azzari (CA)
5. Peter Thorne (PT)
6. Jonathan Odhong' (JO) – Secretary
7. Anthony Whitbread (AW)
8. Mateete Bekunda (MB)
9. Kindu Mekonnen (KM)

Apologies

1. Jerry Glover (JG)
2. Bernard Vanlauwe (BV)

Agenda

1. Review action points from previous meeting – led by chair
2. Discuss the Africa RISING close-out event concept circulated by Jonathan. You can access it here: ARProgram_close-outevent_draftconcept_1606.docx
3. Updates by regional projects on implementation – Chief Scientists/Project Managers
4. Any Other Business

SM:Welcome to the meeting colleagues. We have three substantive agenda items today. Before we start I would like us to do a round of introductions for the benefit of Anthony who is joining us for the first PCT meeting.

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Follow-up action points from previous PCT meeting

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• AR Program-wide analysis of ongoing activities and how/which initiatives could take them up.

Update

• FK: There had been follow up meetings by the Chief Scientists and a matrix providing a synthesis of activities that could be carried into Initiatives identified.
• PT: The main vehicle for continuity for AR activities in Ethiopia is going to be the SI-MFS due to various reasons. A lot of progress has also been made in this regard with the SI-MFS Initiative where we will be retaining two of the four AR sites under the Initiative. The sites to be retained are Basona Worena and the Lemo. Currently partners are discussing how that will work.
• PT: We have also talked to SAPLING, and LCSR Initiative and there are some good ongoing discussions about co-locations. It is still not clear how AR work will be harmonized with these two Initiatives, but this will be clearer soon. The co-locations with LCSR will be at the Basona Worena site.
• AW: Last week we looked at the old AR sites and the scaled-up ones as indicated by PT. We also talked to Woreda officials some of whom recommended that we work in other Kebeles. We also see an opportunity for the technologies validated under Africa RISING to be integrated into these new Kebeles. We have also decided to retain the site coordinators. In general, we are spreading the leadership for different sites across the centers and not everything is in the hands of ILRI as was the case under Africa RISING. For example, Debre Birhan is led by ICARDA.
• FK: It is encouraging to see the efforts made in Ethiopia given the previous years of Africa RISING experience. There is some opportunity to also link some of the previous AR work into the Excellence in Agronomy Initiative through colleagues like Abera Wuletawu and Lulsegad Desta. As much as we are trying to link to the SI-MFS, we are also trying to find whether there are some research gaps that could be filled with residual funds from AR.
• PT: We also need to follow up and ensure the higher-level outputs from AR like SIAF are also picked up. We didn’t come to a strong conclusion for that.

Action:

• PT, KM and AW to document the transition of activities that are ongoing in Ethiopia. Integrate it on the matrix shared by FK.
• FK and PT to work on a documentation of higher-level outputs from Africa RISING.

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Concept note on Africa RISING Program close-out meeting

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Update

• JO: A concept note with a draft agenda for this program-wide close-out event was developed and shared with all PCT members. Some feedback has been received and JO will revise the draft further.
• FK: In relation to the date, I had initial discussions with ZS and JG to find dates that would work best for them. We zeroed in on having the event somewhere around the week of 6 February 2023.
• PT: I don’t recall that the categorization of the technologies (genetic, ecological, and socio-economic intensification) represents how we have categorized technologies in the past. Maybe we could give this a bit more thought.

• FK: The thinking around the proposed grouping of technologies came up in one of the previous discussions with JG back in 2020. It was mostly based around the Malabo-Montpelllier Panel Report.

• PT:I think we need to think about what was AR for and to what extent have we achieved that. Something that leaps out at me, and we need to make sure the presenters will capture is to what extent have we generated evidence at all levels in what we do that it is possible to intensify these farming systems in a sustainable manner? After 10-year of work we should be able to showcase this – although the answers may not be very easy. I think that is a unique selling point for Africa RISING. There may be other grand challenges that AR dealt with, but this is just one of them.
• CA: Following up on PT’s comment, we shouldn’t just list/present technologies etc, but rather we should focus on these grand challenges. So, it would be helpful for presenters to have a guidance beforehand for their posters and what kind of information we are expecting.
• CA: Let’s consider adding to the agenda some of the policy makers / government officials who will be guest honors representing some of the local institutions. Think through the key people we are trying to influence and can we have them in the room.
• MB: Would be good to add an element/discussion on scaling approaches by partners. So far this is not covered in the proposed agenda. Also onsider inviting them for the meeting.

Action: PCT members to review the draft CN further and provide input to it by 9 September. JO to update the draft based on comments received and recirculate an improved version.

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Updates by regional projects on implementation – Chief Scientists/Project Managers

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East and Southern Africa - Update provided by MB

• For the ESA region we currently have limited field activities that are ongoing. Most of our effort is primarily on documentation of our legacy outputs.
• We have also started closing out activities. Last week we had the science close-out meeting for partners. And this was followed up by a close out event for the Tanzania project.
• The Regional Commissioner for Dodoma presided over the launching of the ESA Project Technology Handbook during the close-out event for Tanzania. And she was very pleased with our outputs promising to invite some of our scientists to help her in planning agricultural interventions for the region.
• We are however not closing out activities in Malawi and Zambia because we anticipate that the activities that have been there will continue through some of the One CGIAR Initiatives.
• In September – October there will be follow up close-out activities with farmers in Tanzania.

West Africa – Update provided by FK

• The bulk of West Africa Project activities now are also geared towards documentation of outputs.
• A close-out meeting is planned for the West Africa project sometime in November.
• Project partners have been provided with Africa RISING ethical standards to guide close-out of activities and the exit strategy.
• We are on track, making progress on a Handbook of Technologies validated by the project in West Africa. Hopefully, sometime in November this year we hope to have it go through an external peer review.
• Around the no-cost extension, we will alert partners in the course of next week.

Ethiopia – Update provided by KM

• Field activities for 2022

• Research for Development (R4D)

• Livestock feed and forage development related: Desho grass vetch intercropping trials , Feed and food oat variety cutting management trial, Tree lucerne management trial
• Crop varietal selection and management related: Participatory variety selection (PVS) of released bread wheat varieties and Demonstrating seed treatment using fungicide to manage faba bean gall disease

• Scaling – revolving crop and forage seeds

• Facilitating demonstration of lentil and linseed cultivars in six FTCs
• Multiplying and certifying early generation seed of bread wheat varieties by seed unions
• Facilitate scaling of forage seeds received from the revolving seed arrangements

• Planned/ongoing/completed studies in Ethiopia include:

• SIAF-SIAF assessment of selected crop, livestock and NRM technologies
• Gender - Social dynamics and sustainable intensification in Ethiopia
• RHoMIS survey and analyses
• Scaling Assessment-Scaling assessment of Africa RISING innovations
• Spillover Assessment Suitability studies Grain quality assessment – (a)Understanding diffusion of Africa RISING introduced ::*crop and forage technologies, (b)Mechanization, (c)Nutrition

• Upcoming legacy products include: (a)Learning extension manual, (b)Policy briefs, (c) Photo book, (d) Special journal publication, (e) Establish technology parks for livestock feed and forage innovations.
• Site level capacity development as part of exit strategies on livestock feed and forage production and utilization (farmers, extension experts, researchers, forage seed producers and media/journalists ) and high value fruit trees(Private entrepreneurs, NGOs, researchers, extension and decision makers).
• Implemented a broadcasting of livestock feed and forage innovations through local radios. Languages used were:

• Three languages (Amharic, Hadiyysa, Oromifa)
• Eight programs in Amhara (north Shewa), 12 programs in SNNPR (Hadiya) and 8 programs in Oromia (Bale)

• JO: In addition to the updates by Chief Scientists is that we are working with them to produce an end of Program report. I have already started receiving some contributions from ESA, more are forthcoming from West Africa and Ethiopia.

• CA: We are also working on outputs at the program level, mostly looking at the impact of Africa RISING and also looking at impact by technologies. One of the issues has been looking at the country level first and then later we will aggregate by project regions and then later at the program level. We will also be looking at the mitigating effect of resilience to climate change of the technology. We took the case of Malawi because we collected the data before other countries, but then we will later extend this to other countries. The results look encouraging and we are preparing a publication that we also hope to present at the Program-wide close-out meeting. We are collaborating with colleagues from IITA and ILRI on these studies.