By Aya Ladgham | High Atlas Foundation Volunteer
On February 25th 2022, there was a meeting about how to build a platform for Research and Innovation Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.
Dr. Ioannis Dimitriou from SLU Global talked about the challenges for this collaboration, such as no one knowing who is doing what or when, the fact that there are limited tools, that best practices are not shared,or not systematically managed, and that there are not enough resources.
He also addressed the objectives of this work, i.e. how to improve quality, how to map the project, and how to make new instruments for data analysis.
“We should make countries work together and promote more maintenance. Joining forces is important for the future. Finding the right information is very difficult. We hope in the future we will have advanced tools.”
The LEAP4FNSSA project was mandated to establish a sustainable structure or platform for the efficient and coherent implementation of the EU-AU research and innovation partnership as described in the FNSSA roadmap.
Dr. Irene Annor-Frempong from FARA Africa spoke about the criteria of the platform that should be bi-continental, uniting Africa and Europe for the benefit of both continents, and dealing with common priorities. It should also be operational and open to all institutions, both public and private.
She also mentioned the International Research Consortium (IRC): a group of institutions committed to working for the mid- to long-term towards a commonly defined goal. So who can join the IRC? Every institution that is willing to contribute to the FNSSA.
What are the benefits of joining the IRC? Becoming a member of the IRC may help increase the impact of your initiative, optimize the utilization of your work and results, and gain greater recognition and visibility for your contribution to the success of the EU-AU platform supported by the highest authorities.
Lastly, eight months from now, in September 2022, there’s going to be the final write-shop and the launch of the AU-EU IRC platform.
(originally published on High Atlas Foundation Blog | Photo via LEAP4FNSSA Twitter)