By Panagri Media Reportor
Top African institutions sign agricultural knowledge management partnership
The framework was co-designed by staff from the CAADP-X4P partnership including African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services, Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa, Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa, West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and Africa Union Commission’s Agriculture and Food Security Division.
They worked alongside CGIAR communications and outreach staff from the Africa Rice Centre, Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and International Livestock Research Institute. This framework was part of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa Knowledge Management for Agricultural Development challenge, which brings together communication and knowledge management staff from across Africa to reflect and co-design knowledge management strategies and good practices.
The aim is to enable agricultural research and innovation, including extension services, to contribute effectively to food and nutrition security, economic development and climate mitigation in Africa.
The programme’s threemonth course, in collaboration with the Knowledge for Development Partnership, builds the individual and collective capacities of the critical supra-national agricultural research and innovation institutions.
The new framework was shared and endorsed at the FARA-led Science and Partnerships for Agriculture Conference held in Accra, Ghana, on September 14–16, 2022. In his opening remarks, Simplice Noula Fonkou, head of the Agriculture and Food Security Division at the African Union Commission, noted:
“We realise that our lack of appreciation of knowledge management over time has kept us back. FARA’s knowledge management initiative, under the CAADP-XP4 action, is helping to up the game of African institutions to ensure that knowledge is packaged, archived, disseminated, and utilised properly.”
Given the recent consultations between FARA, the Africa Union, African Development Bank (AfDB) and CGIAR regarding how best to work together to strengthen African agricultural development, the challenge for the group was to co-design a joint framework for collective action around knowledge management.
As Aggrey Agumya, FARA’s director of research and innovation mentioned, “FARA and CAADP-XP4 institutions have had a strong collaboration with individual CGIAR Research Centres.
This group has made an important step forward to establish a framework on how we work together in a more seamless way.” After a SWOT analysis of the situation and an initial knowledge café within the context of the KM4AgD challenge, the group used a knowledge management framework within the Akosombo Integration Agenda to develop priority work areas. These priorities are around knowledge partnership, leadership, and governance, knowledge processes, knowledge products and services as well as monitoring and evaluation.
The framework is underpinned by the guiding principles of the joint communique on “The HighLevel Consultative Forum on Strengthening Africa’s Agricultural Research and Innovation in the Context of the One CGIAR Reforms.”
Some of the key challenges it expects to tackle include: Establishing more systematic linkages between CGIAR and CAADP-XP4 partners: The partnership will look to establish formal and informal working ties between CGIAR centres and CAADP XP4 partners. It will also emphasise learning as well as mechanisms such as use of the FARA Africa Dgroups Community in advancing knowledge sharing and learning.
Getting technologies to the field:
The joint communique explicitly mentions the need to improve delivery of technologies to farmers “at the scale of millions of farmers and in particular, working through AfDB’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) to get to farmers at scale”.
The joint framework builds upon this by including actions to support countries’ design strategies and policies. It also advocates for investment in digital extension and decentralising information at extension level, thus bringing it closer to the farmers. Much of this work will be done through the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) and its partners in the context of the Research to Extension Agenda (R2E Agenda).
Developing open and interoperable systems:
Ensuring that data is shared and used openly between CGIAR centres and national and supra-national organisations is critical.
The framework lays out critical actions to ensure greater openness between institutions, and development of standardised data and informationsharing protocols.
One immediate action will be the development of a network of DSpace users for sharing research outputs. In the short to medium term, the development of a continental knowledge graph for AR4D has been proposed.
Making research processes more inclusive:
A key priority for CGIAR and CAADPXP4 partners is to improve priority setting in addition to instituting and ensuring a mechanism for effectively representing Africa’s priorities and research delivery. Knowledge sharing and management can support this effort through improved sharing and exchange, and a joint culture of working together on specific activities.
This collaboration will particularly focus around knowledge management products, events and resource mobilisation as well as joint awards to recognise contributions on specific topics. The partners will also work to acknowledge the need to “decolonise” the research effort to make sure a diversity of knowledge systems and perspectives are recognised.