Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Meeting for Coordinators’ of projects funded by the Coordinated Call for Africa

November 28th, 2011. The European Commission, Directorate E – Biotechnologies, Agriculture, Food, in partnership with CAAST-Net held a meeting of coordinators of projects funded via the Coordinated Call for Africa. The meeting explored possibilities for cooperation between the Africa Call Food Security projects in order to exploit the natural synergies of the projects. This meeting created a framework for future cooperation, identifying needs, opportunities, and priorities for areas of cooperation.

Objectives:
  • The creation of a network of Food Security projects funded by the Africa Call and projects relevant to the Africa Call;
  • Mutual sharing of project aims, activities, etc;
  • The creation of an international contact point for each project to facilitate cooperation;
  • A framework for future cooperation.
Africa Call Food Security Project Abstracts
EAU4Food
EAU4Food seeks to address the need for new approaches to increase food production in irrigated areas in Africa, while ensuring healthy and resilient environments. Potential pitfalls of introducing innovations in local farming systems, like limited adoption by farmers and trade-off effects to other (environmental) systems are overcome by, respectively, i) utilizing a true trans-disciplinary approach, which involves the active participation of all stakeholders in all relevant disciplines, and ii) by determining and respecting so called sustainable production thresholds. EAU4Food is executed in four irrigated areas in Africa, viz. Southern Africa (Mozambique and South-Africa), Tunisia, Mali and Ethiopia to fully benefit from the potential of cross distributing promising strategies and innovations.

Waterbiotech
Natural biological treatment systems include lagooning, land treatment, phytodepuration, or constructed wetlands systems. They can be applied as secondary or tertiary purification treatment, allowing the removal of pathogenic microorganisms and the degradation of the organic pollutants, so that waste water can be recycled for irrigation and domestic use and hence reduce the pressure on the hydric resources. Other biotechnological techniques to be taken into account within this proposal are bio-filtration, membrane bioreactors and algae and other aquatic crops application for wastewater purification.

SUNRAY
SUNRAY has seven work packages: WP1 optimises communication and coordination within the Consortium. WP2 maps current nutrition research activities in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines the operating environment. WP3 analyses the views of stakeholders. WP4 examines the impact of environmental changes on nutrition. WP5 builds consensus on research priorities through workshops in three African regions. WP6 develops a strategic framework for future research in the form of a roadmap. WP7 disseminates project outputs. The SUNRAY Consortium has four African and five European institutions and an Advisory Group of six external experts with complementary expertise. The total budget of 968,972 Euros is for a period of 18 months

INSARD
The main aim of this project is to facilitate the participation of a broader range of European and African civil society organizations in the formulation and implementation of ARD. It will do so by:
1. Designing a structure for coordination and communication between European and African CSO’s involved in influencing policies and practices around ARD.
2. Define policy influencing strategies, including thematic priorities, target groups/individuals and tools.
3. Lobby key African and European research organizations and donors.
4. Working towards defining research priorities which draw on interaction between researchers and CSOs.

PAEPARD
The Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development (Phase II) is to build joint African-European multi-stakeholder partnerships in agricultural research for development. PAEPARD II nurtures partnerships to increase the quantity and quality of joint proposals (leading to more funded initiatives). PAEPARD II not only focuses on FP7, but includes other European Commission (EDF, EC Budget through the FSTP) and bilateral funding instruments supporting ARD that might be mobilized for emerging ARD partnerships.

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