The six (6) members of the INSARD consortium have launched by organizing a first Management-Team meeting in Tanzania in March (22-24).
INSARD (INcluding Smallholders in Agricultural Research for Development) is a partnership between:
- ETC Foundation in the Netherlands,
- ESAFF (Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers’ Forum in Southern and Eastern Africa)
- GRET in France,
- PELUM Regional Desk (Participatory Ecological Land Use Management) in Southern Africa (Zambia),
- Practical Action (United Kingdom)
- REPAOC (Réseau des Plates-formes nationales d’ONG d’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre) in South-West Francophone Africa (Senegal),
INSARD aims at addressing these concerns, developing a transparent system for good-quality CSO inputs into ARD design and implementation and formulating strategies for the continued functioning of this beyond the project period, including attention to the resource needs.
It will do so by:
Designing a structure for coordination and communication between European and African CSOs (FOs and NGOs) involved in influencing ARD policies and practices.
- Jointly defining CSOs’ research priorities and the strategy to clearly communicate these to other stakeholders and ARD fora.
- Working towards defining research outlines which draw on interaction between researchers and CSOs, firmly based on farmers’ demands.
- Engaging in a constructive dialogue with key African and European research organisations and donors.
The INSARD consortium will make a concerted effort to collaborate with other related initiatives, including:
- CONCORD, the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development
- PAEPARD II (Platform for African–European Partnership on Agricultural Research for Development)
- CAADP (Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Policy), specifically its fourth pillar: the research component
- Prolinnova (Promoting Local Innovation in ecologically oriented agriculture and natural resources management), a Global Partnership Programme under the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
- JOLISAA (Joint Learning in Innovation Systems in African Agriculture), an EC-supported project also under FP7
- AFSA (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa).
