Africa RISING project in Ethiopia and participatory agricultural research

Peter Thorne

Expert meeting on participatory agricultural research: Approaches, design and evaluation, Oxford, 9-13 December 2013

Introduction

• Africa RISING = Africa Research In Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation

• Three research-for-development projects supported by the United States Agency for International Development(USAID) as part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative (www.feedthefuture.gov).

• Create opportunities for smallholder farm households to move out of hunger and poverty through sustainably intensified farming systems that improve food, nutrition, and income security, particularly for women and children, and conserve or enhance the natural resource base.

Projects

Three project are located in the Ethiopian highlands, West Africa East and Southern Africa

Managed by ILRI and IITA Monitoring and Evaluation, IFPRI

Ethiopian Highlands

Africa RISING in Ethiopian highlands: improve food security and farm income diversification through sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems

Integrated approach: strong participatory base to identify technologies and management practices that could work for farmers whilst accounting for the wider contexts in which these must operate (e.g. market access, effectiveness of institutions, policy environment).

Research components Research Component

one : Characterisation and

stratification of households within engaged communities.

A basis for identifying and propagating improved technologies and management strategies

Research Component Two: Inter-disciplinary action

research at household and community scales

Including support for peer-to-peer knowledge exchange within communities

strengthening and augmenting existing practices

Research Component Three: Participatory market opportunity

identification, and value chain analyses

Engagement via multi-stakeholder platforms

Participatory approaches

Participatory community analysis Sustainable Livelihoods Asset Evaluation

(SLATE) Indigenous knowledge acquisition and

formalisation (AKT5) Value chain analysis

What’s in this for me?

Numerous approaches. Which horse for which course?

Numerous approaches. Can / how do they complement each other (including scale issues)?

Years of doing this stuff. What have we learned?

Piles of participation: but what are the generic lessons?

More

http://www.africa-rising.net

http://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/16498

http://africa-rising. wikispaces.com/Calendar

http://goo.gl/2m56L

http://africa-rising. wikispaces.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/ africa-rising

http://www.flickr.com/photos/africa-rising

Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation

africa-rising.net