ProgCloseOut

Africa RISING Program Close-out Event 7 - 9 February, 2023 Alissa Hotel Accra, Ghana== OBJECTIVES

1. Showcase Africa RISING achievements at regional and program level.
2. Present and critically assess the major research and development results of the program.
3. Explore opportunities for further scaling of project outputs and outcomes beyond Africa RISING.
4. Harness key lessons for Africa RISING and sister projects.

EXPECTED OUTPUTS

1. Documentation of Africa RISING's results and their transition pathways
2. Synthesis notes capturing implementation lessons on systems research and SIAF from the perspectives of Africa RISING and other projects like CSISA and SIIL

DAY ONE, 7 February [Tuesday] 

• 08:30 Registration
• 09:00 Participant introductions - Facilitators
• 09:45 Close out event objectives & agenda overview – Peter Thorne
• 09:50 Opening/welcome remarks
  • Africa RISING Program Coordination Team Chair - Siboniso Moyo, ILRI DDG-R4D Livestock Genetics and Feeds & Forages
  • USAID Ghana Country Mission - Amber Lily Kenny, Deputy Office Director – Economic Growth
  • USAID Washington DC - Jerry Glover, Deputy Director, Center for Agriculture Led Growth
  • Honourable Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture Ghana Ministry - Hon. Mohammed Tufero
• 10:30 Coffee break and group photo
• 11:00 Timeline review of the Africa RISING Program with key milestones and achievements - joint presentation by Fred Kizito, Peter Thorne, Carlo Azzarri

12:00 Market Place of project level technologies/achievements (in poster format) organized around three thematic SI entry points: (i) genetic intensification, (ii) ecological intensification, and (iii) socio-economic intensification.

• • Genetic intensification
    • Improved crop varieties (Faba bean with bread wheat) in Ethiopia – Zewdie Bishaw
    • Improved forage varieties in Ethiopia – Melkamu Bezabih
    • Drought tolerant quality protein maize – Patrick Okori
    • High yielding disease resistant groundnut – Patrick Okori
    • Dual purpose sorghum varieties – Folorunso Akinseye
    • Resilient varieties of Tomato – Inviolate Mosha
    • Improved/diseases tolerant vegetable varieties adapted to northern Ghana – Jean Baptiste Tignegre

• 13:00 - 14:20: Lunch break
• 14:30 Market Place Cont'd...
  • Ecological intensification
    • Landscape-scale rehabilitation in Ethiopia – Degefie Tibebe
    • Site-specific fertilizer recommendations – Getachew Agegnehu
    • Doubled up legumes – Regis Chikowo
    • Targeting crop sequencing – Regis Chikowo
    • Soil and water conservation in Tanzania – Elirehema Swai
    • Cowpea living mulch in Ghana – Nurudeen Abdul Rahman
    • Contour bunding in Mali – Kalifa Traore

• 15:30 Coffee break and group photo
  • Socio-economic intensification
    • Feed trough in Ethiopia – Kindu Mekonnen
    • Small scale mechanization (2WT tractors) in Ethiopia – Rabe Yahaya
    • High value fruit trees in Ethiopia – Endalkachew Woldemeskel
    • Technologies for reducing post-harvest losses – Christopher Mutungi
    • Vegetable gardens in Mali – Mahama Saaka
    • Maize shellers in Ghana – Bekele Kotu
    • Advisory services in Ghana and Mali – Fred Kizito
    • Efficient feed utilization through feed troughs in West Africa – Sadat Salifu

• 16:30 End of day 1

• 18:30 Welcome Cocktail

DAY TWO, 8 February [Wednesday]

• 08:30 Overview of Day 2 agenda
• 08:40 Recap of previous day (Menti excercise)
• 09:00 Panel interview on implementing the SIAF - Regis Chikowo, Patrick Okori, Jim Hammond, Nurudeen Abdul Rahman & Peter Thorne
• 10:30 Coffee break
• 11:00 Data management discussion - Benedict Boyubie, Daniel Mgalla, Birhan Abdulkadir (coordinated by Carlo Azzarri)
• 11:30 Returns on Investment - Bekele Kotu, Jim Hammond, and Julius Manda (coordinated by Carlo Azzarri)
• 12:00 Program-wide synthesis study results - Carlo Azzarri
• 13:00 Lunch
• 14:30 Country table discussions to reflect on AR Program-wide synthesis results
• 15:00 Fishbowl: Partnerships in Scaling – Lessons from selected scaling partners - Million Gebreyes (ILRI), Haroon Sseguya (IITA), Patrick Kiao (Mwanga), Betty Maeda (frmr. USAID Tanzania), Nana Ntiamoah (Degas), Aminata Coulibaly (Mali Mark)
• 15:30 Coffee break
• 16:45 Wrap up day 2

DAY THREE, 9 February [Thursday]

• 08:30 Overview of day 3 agenda
• 08:40 Response to some of the concerns about the program-wide synthesis study results - Carlo Azzarri
• 09:00 Experiences and lessons in harnessing diversity and research partnerships in projects like the Africa RISING partnerships? – Mateete Bekunda
• 09:45 Building upon Africa RISING successes - F.Kizito
• 10:15 Coffee break
• 10:30 What to expect in the upcoming end of program report - Jonathan Odhong
• 11:00 Panel discussion: How to conduct systems research and showcase value – experiences from Africa RISING, CSISA, and One CGIAR Mixed Farming Systems Initiative. Panel: Peter Thorne (AR), Santiago Lopez (Mixed Farming Systems Initiative),Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon, Jerry Glover (USAID) - facilitated by Fred Kizito
• 12:30 Remarks by USAID - Jerry Glover
• 13:00 Lunch
• 14:30 Fun debrief exercise with all participants
• 15:30 Reflections by the Regional Project Managers - Fred Kizito & Peter Thorne/Kindu Mekonnen
• 15:00 Closing remarks
  • High level leadership from the lead centers
    • Siboniso Moyo, ILRI
    • Robert Asiedu, IITA

• 16:00 Wrap up of event

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NOTES

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• Day ONE [7 February 2023]

Participants introduction

- Through the Mapping exercise, the facilitators asked participants some reflective questions on the key regional project achievements that they would like to invest in if the regional groups would be given USD 50 Million fund.

• East and Southern Africa Region

- Integrated land management, Carbon on farm which is related to carbon sequestration and growing trees conserving the carbon,

- Soil health,

- Climate and economic resilience that will be addressed through genetic intensification,

- Good agronomic practices,

- Market use and gender

- Institutional capacity building,

- Food safety.

• Ethiopian Highlands Region

- Problem identification through research for development phase and mainstreaming this into national systems.

- They were able to create a lot of demand for many of their technologies for both in core livestock and natural resource management and they think now are ready to scale through business pipeline development, private business models and institutional development.

- They have research products generated and they target to deliver them to more partners through capacity development and knowledge sharing.

• West Africa Region

- Crop-livestock integration (including breeding, rotation, compost production, the integration through soil and water conservation, etc.),

- Strengthening partnership by putting together all stakeholders and partners to transform the mission to donors or politician,

- The application innovative platform with partners,

- Enhancing nutrition.

Close out event objectives & agenda overview – Peter Thorne

Peter Throne highlighted the meeting objectives:

1. Showcasing achievements at the regional, individual project levels, but also some of programs driven activities that were engaged.

2. Research achievements that the research team and partnership have achieved.

3. Discussing about 11 years of sustainable intensification, what does it means?

4. Harnessing some of the key lessons, some of the research lessons, as well as some of the key operational lessons.

Opening/Welcome remarks

• Africa RISING Program Coordination Team Chair - Siboniso Moyo, ILRI DDG-R4D Livestock Genetics and Feeds & Forages

- Moyo appreciated the support of the USAID leadership that has been part of Africa RISING program, recognizing team effort and support from Rob Petram, Jerry Clover and Zach Stewart and many others. She highlighted outputs and milestones that Africa RISING has achieved.

1. Africa RISING is a good resource for learning, particularly about Sustainable Intensification in Agriculture system.

2. Opportunity to practice some of scaling approaches and working with different partnership arrangement.

3. The program has built capacity to many students in the continent.

- Moyo noted the way forward for the Africa RISING program the good work where she noted the One CGIAR initiatives where some of Africa RISING technologies will continue.

• Honourable Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture Ghana Ministry - Hon. Mohammed Tufero

- On behalf of the government of Ghana, he expressed his appreciation to United states Agency (USAID) for funding the Africa RISING program in advancing agriculture sector. He noted that, currently they are looking at strengthening this partnership through ventures and engagements.

- He thanked Africa RISING team for the great work done especially in improving livelihoods of farmers, developing technologies for farmers, build capacities of 10 PhD students, 12 masters students and 5 bachelor students. The program also brought together 15 strategic partnerships both private and public entities as it has eight CGIAR centers in Ghana. “Although Africa RISING is ending, but its legacy will never end but live for many years through OneCGIAR research Initiative and that contributes to sustainable Intensification of mixed farming system,” he said.

- The government is looking on ways to see the benefits of the beneficial collaboration among the CGIAR centers and among partners across initiatives to address hunger, poverty and malnutrition. The new initiative of mixed farming system will go into previous successes obtained with Africa RISING program to make it function effectively.

Timeline review of the Africa RISING Program with key milestones and achievements - joint presentation by Fred Kizito, Peter Thorne, Carlo Azzarri

• Fred Kizito presentation

Fred highlighted that working as a team/family was the main reason for the success of Africa RISING, the team had partnership experiences across six countries.

He noted that with in the SI-MFS initiative, there is an opportunity on how to better engage agronomy, monitoring, technological innovation such as ICT, but also improving resilience within both systems, as well as the adaptive

capacity of the systems and community to cope with it.

He noted that the theory of change was very simple, that when they developed demand driven research, it helped them in deploying technologies that allow better efficiency, as well as better productivity.

Good accountability among partners has led the program to be more successful. He noted that phase one, was interesting. The quick wins became tangible researchable product that they built on the gaps from, and resulted the partnership base to be expanded.

He highlighted the key aspect about phase 2 that largely based on changing the mindset on partnerships, to integrate the works they have and to think about the framework that will allow them to move into integrated solution in farm level, at the community, landscape level and beyond.

He noted that the approaches from phase one and two where the phase one was about technology identification and in phase two, they thought about how these technologies be taken to scale, including how they can engage scaling partners and private sectors that can take these to another level. Thus, some of the key intervention and outputs that took place during the phase one was enhancing food safety, reducing soil loss, improving livelihood, improving household nutrition, developing decision support tools, enhancing livestock activities, integrated soil management, etc.

He noted that the sustainable intensification assessment framework (SIAF), where the Ethiopian team took the advantage of sustainable intensification framework to help rural households, as well as West Africa team used it in scaling and technology identification. He explained that SIAF is a connecting tissue and contributed a lot to the Africa RISING works.

His key message was that Africa RISING is leaving the knowledge product that can be used by the target audiences with sustainable intensification for mixed farming system initiative as well.

• Comments/discussion emerged from the presentation

Birhanu noted the operational challenges to run the project for 12 years especially on annual budget where the support given by the good management and from other project leads was helpful to continue with project. The second challenge was the technology management parks especially in West Africa. The other challenges are the absences of the economists and gender experts at the beginning of project, On the second question, he noted that if the teams could have SIAF at the beginning, it could have helped to include the mechanization, gender and social economic research and bringing development actors during planning stage and the capacity building strategy to engage graduate students. If USD 15 million would be provided, it would be better to address the strategies

Participant 2: He noted that, they were able to put together the indication come from research to the benefit of private sectors for the innovations to be picked up. Having more systematic and more simplicity about the partnership building and engaging with partners since beginning pushed them to look for framework to assess their activities on the ground in SIAF did a good well.

Participant 3: He emphasized on recognizing the efforts and contribution done by partners particularly on the challenges related to operational management. He also explained that, they discussed on Climate information services since nowadays there are many data tools developed to support all technologies that they are trying to implement. He said that there is a need to put much effort into this direction.

- Participant 4: Gender inclusiveness is among achievements. He highlighted the need of having insurance policies so that all the activities that they have been doing with farmers to create an insurance to them.

Participant 5: He talked about the concept of integration, as it was understood more later in the project and started to be applied in the phase two, which affected the analysis interms of the system approach. He also talked about the seed system as there is a need to engage more seed suppliers of many crops since the challenge was much based on well-known crops like maize and groundnuts, etc, to help farmers easily understand where to access the seeds. The other part he talked about was on the social domain, as they did not collect enough data in these domains noting that there is a need to do better on this component.

Participant 6: He highlighted achievements that were not mentioned including changes in food security, income and reduction in a poverty level. Replying on a question two he noted that, to be more successful there is a need of conducting comprehensive stakeholder analysis and agribusiness landscape mapping to bring more actors on board.

Participant 7: She noted that Africa RISING gave scientists room to maneuver, flexibility and freedom to design and implement research especially developing scaling innovations.

Participant 8: Africa RISING has succeeded to change behavior of people through nutrition component. Also, Africa RISING gave preference to Malian students to be engaged in PHD studies.

Participant 9: He highlighted areas of improving including to improve mechanization, post-harvest, farm management, as well as social economic intensification including linking farmers to the market, access to finance and other access to information.

Participant 10: He noted that on the achievements, the farmers must be invited to give testimonies themselves. Then on what they could have done differently, he noted that, they could have scaling technologies to the south midway rather than concentrating or focusing all the technologies in the north whereby this would have given Africa RISING the wider coverage interms of technological dissemination.

Participant 11: The issue that has been raised is innovation platform that bringing together all partners and stakeholders for technology demonstrator validation in scaling. The second one is how to bring in together social innovations and technological innovations.

Participant 12: On things that were not mentioned in achievements, is about internal studies on impact evaluation at each stage or phase of activities. On what to be done in future, he suggested that, they have to look on agroforestry integration into much of their activities.

Market Place of project level technologies/achievements

• 'Genetic intensification'''

Poster 1: Resilient vegetable varieties for improved productivity and income in Tanzania

Question: The yield report, is it irrigation or rainfed system?

Response: It is both in irrigated and rainfed areas, but the experiment was done during the rainy season

Question: During the rainy season, there is a lot of production. What do farmers do with the reduced price?

Response: This is a season which farmers use to produce their vegetables, hence we also opted for introducing the varieties in the same season with that of farmers production calendar

Question: What is the unit of analysis for your experiment?

Response: We use small proportion of farmers field, but we translate it to productivity per acre

Question: How do you increase shelve life of the tomato

Response: We introduce a zero energy cold chamber, a freezing system and also solar driers are also interventions we use.

Poster 2: New groundnut variety for improved resilience in central Tanzania

Question: Did you do market demand analysis?

Response: Yes, that is what we do in PVS and product profiling during our breeding process

Question: In Ghana farmers face certified seeds for a wider adoption, is this problem the same in Tanzania too?

Response: Yes, there is under investment in legumes and open pollinated crops. We are working with emerging seed companies to support high quality seed production

Poster 3: Dual-purpose sorghum varieties tested in Mali

Question: What would be the way forward for the local variety?

Response: We will do more trials, to include local varieties in our selection

Question: Have you disaggregated preferences by gender?

Response: Yes, we did, but not presented here

Question: How about quality of biomass?

Response: The improved varieties have higher digestibility

Question: Do you see penalties for either biomass or grain production?

Response: Yes, we saw that for the local varieties.

Poster 4: Improved feed and forage innovations in Ethiopia

Question: Do farmers produce these forages at a commercial scale? Have you seen food-feed forages as well? which once do you think could scale to other countries?

Response: Sweet Lupin is a food-feed crop. Oat is also food-feed. Cowpea is food-feed crop.

Question: What is your evidence of labor reduction?

Response: Women are involved in feeding livestock. When they have access to technologies such as feeding trough, this reduces their labor demand.

Poster 5: Improving food security and household income in Tanzania through drought tolerant quality protein maize

Question: How to sustain seed production, why don’t Meru company contribute to the variety maintenance?

Response: Seed companies have their own priorities; they focus more on what brings money immediately.

Poster 6: Improved crop varieties in Ethiopia

Question: How do you tackle disease problem?

Response: We introduce new crops to break the cycle, farmers also use packages

Question: Seed, who supplies it?

Response: We produce seeds with communities. There are no enough companies to supply formal seeds.

Question: What is the level of availability of early generation seeds?

response: We are working with the research system who are producing early generation seeds.

Question: How many farmers adopt these varieties

Response: We do not have such a figure, but we have figures for total number of farmers who benefited from these technologies.

Ecological intensification