A FARA way for African agricultural development

The forum for agricultural research in Africa (FARA), is working to combine the strengths of all stakeholders in agricultural R&D in Africa, including European research institutions, as agriculture has to be the engine behind Africa’s economic development writes Ralph von Kaufmann.

FARA is a publicly funded institution established to help improve the livelihoods of 100s of millions of resource poor African agricultural producers and consumers by improving farm productivity and competitiveness. The national agricultural research institutes were established to provide the new knowledge that those farmers need for innovation. That includes new varieties, husbandry techniques, markets, policy options and so on.

Acting alone the national institutes are not, however, well suited to dealing with issues like diseases and pests, and trade that cross national boundaries or in which neighbouring countries have common interests but on which it would be wasteful for each country to conduct independent research. This led to the formation of four sub regional organisations (SROs) for agricultural research that bring together neighbouring countries in East, North, Southern and West Africa. The SROs have likewise found that there are issues which affect all sub-regions and on which a single African voice is most effective hence, they formed the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) to be the apex agricultural research institution for the continent. However, FARA is not an implementing agency. FARA is a forum comprised of all stakeholders in African agricultural research and development. Its primary functions are to advocate for increased and better harmonised investment in agricultural research and to promote networking amongst our stakeholders to increase their collective impact in serving resource-poor African agricultural producers.

The smallholder farmer has a remarkable ability to innovate when given the opportunity. So we have to create the circumstances in which they can innovate. What we’re trying to do is help the agencies that provide the support that farmers need to function more effectively through collaboration and task sharing, in a novel programme called the Platform for African-European Partnership for Agriculture Research and Development (PAEPARD). We are trying to make African-European collaboration even more efficient than it has been in the past by creating an alternative to the one-on-one partnerships that were almost invariably European-led and largely supply driven. We’re trying to create a more positive image based on the truth that African agriculture has been and will continue to be a good investment. 

Published: Monday, 9th November 2009

Comment on this article

Comments

No comments for this article, be the first to comment