This regional event for all DeSIRA projects in Eastern and Southern Africa will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, during the Science and Partnerships for Agriculture Conference (SPAC 2024).
The CONNECT Days Eastern and Southern Africa are being prepared in close collaboration with FARA.

Purpose of the CONNECT Days

This event aims to share the lessons learned in the implementation of DeSIRA projects and to identify the conditions to continue their innovation trajectories.

To this end, the event is anticipated to offer three types of activities:

• a project fair with individual booths to promote and discuss your projects,
• inter-project thematic workshops to learn together from the implementation of DeSIRA, and
• round tables with other stakeholders aimed at continuing the innovation trajectories of projects.

Each activity is designed to feed into the others.

We have reserved spaces for all your projects and organisations in each activity so that you can present various facets and results. In this way, we aim to offer you optimal exposure both individually and collectively.

The programme will be detailed and regularly updated on the dedicated page on our website, and we will also send you updates.

in three components: a day of exchanges between projects aimed at identifying common lessons, a day of contacts with third parties with whom to continue or scale up DeSIRA innovations, a day with regional and international organisations to feed the agenda of sustainable agricultural innovations in favour of climate and biodiversity.

More on the webpage of the event

Over the past decade, “ecosystem” frameworks for innovation and entrepreneurship have gained mainstream acceptance in economic development, emphasizing the complex environments where innovators operate. These frameworks liken the innovation landscape to a biological ecosystem, highlighting the interplay of various actors, elements, and conditions that either support or hinder innovation. Recognizing their significance, numerous initiatives aim to strengthen these ecosystems at various levels, from city-specific maps to global snapshots. Despite this, the concept of local innovation ecosystems remains unclear, with overlapping yet distinct ideas like entrepreneurial ecosystems creating confusion. This ambiguity poses challenges for practitioners, particularly in regions outside established innovation hubs, making it hard to demonstrate the value of ecosystem-strengthening efforts and fostering collaboration. However, research by MIT D-Lab indicates that well-developed local innovation ecosystems provide consistent benefits, including shared assets, infrastructure, resources, favorable conditions, and enhanced capacities. Success stories, such as an initiative in the Philippines addressing an agricultural crisis, showcase how improved relationships and collaborative efforts can yield significant results. Effective strategies for engaging collaborators include identifying shared goals, starting with motivated individuals, building from small wins, creating safe learning spaces, and publicly celebrating progress. These strategies help create conducive environments for both local and adapted innovations, enabling ambitious regional achievements.

For the full article, please see here

From May 20 to 24, DeSIRA LIFT conducted the fifth Training for Innovation Facilitators in Addis Ababa for DeSIRA projects in East Africa. Seventeen professionals from seven projects—Yayu Coffee, Women Coffee Climate, DARE, Ecofoodsystems, Climate Smart Malawi, Agroforestry Rwanda, and TAP AIS—attended the training. 

Mr. Mesha Argaw, representing the EU Delegation in Ethiopia, opened the session. He mentioned that ´engaging in agricultural innovation is not an end by itself. The best experiences, lessons and challenges obtained during the implementation of DeSIRA Initiatives need to be shared among the various actors of DeSIRA. This calls for the creation of a conducive knowledge and experience-sharing space or platform, as you are doing today. In this regard, DeSIRA Lift needs to be acknowledged, and also appreciated for the considerable effort it is making´.

He furthermore mentioned that ´ when we speak of innovation, it is also important to consider how this innovation is going to be communicated and transferred in such a way that they consider communities’ traditional knowledge and experience; and how innovation include women in the equation as experience has shown that women are very much involved in the agricultural sector, but still face significant limitations to access resources, technology, and innovations´.

Aurora Martin and Bekele Haile, leaders of the Women Coffee Climate and Yayu Coffee projects respectively, highlighted the participants’ crucial roles in strengthening innovation in local platforms. These two projects co-sponsored the training. 

The training, tailored to the needs of the participants, was delivered by Ola Dolinska and Priscila Henriquez from DeSIRA LIFT. It covered topics such as the facilitator’s role, facilitation skills and tools, and engaging stakeholders in partnerships. 

Project structure and scaling strategies 

The structure of agricultural innovation projects needs to be designed and have the capacity to adjust to constraints (time and resources) to maximize their performance and outcomes, this requires functional skillsets to ensure adaptability and embeddedness. 

Time and resources constraints – inherent to project – limit the possibility of reaching massive enough tipping points. These may include policy changes which often take time.  

Given these constraints, and with a view to maximize effects and possibly go to scale, projects develop strategies that seek to involve various stakeholders through different approaches or setups (Innovation Platforms, training, discussion, and dialogue (including policy)) to ensure optimal contribution to longer term innovation trajectories. 

Scaling strategies often combine scaling up and out and build on partnerships with various players. They include and sometimes blend : 

• Scaling innovations in value chains through professional bodies and public-private partnerships; 
• Scaling farming technologies through the public research-extension system; 
• Scaling through a disruptive Coalition of Actors; 
• Scaling through end-users (consumers). 

Key drivers for scaling 

Dissemination of information and knowledge allows for communities outside the project – and sometimes even in other countries – to understand what the innovations are and express their interests in replicating them or pushing them forward, thus providing opportunities for scaling out.  

The commercial potential of innovations, and the availability of business networks to ensure market access is a strong vector of scaling. 

Public organizations can support these networks to reinforce their capacities (including functional), to provide information and help then apprehend the results of Research. By doing so, not only do these public organizations act as translators or science results to businesspeople but they also contribute to building a conducive business environment.  

Governments are a key partner for scaling. This is particularly the case when action and results, stemming from implementing Research Action in DeSIRA projects, feed into agendas endorsed by governments, to meet their national or international commitments to addressing grand challenges such as Climate Change, the SDGs or the UN Food Systems Summit. 

As a direct example, policy makers have an enforcement effect on some transformative changes by setting by laws or adopting outcomes as standards. 

Donors have a similar effect. Their design and allocation of resources to initiatives such as DeSIRA asserts their own commitments to these broader challenges and agendas and legitimizes projects and outcomes. 

The recordings and presentations of the Webinar are available on the dedicated page.

The Training Experience

The workshop, held in December, was a blend of interactive elements, including role-playing exercises, group activities, experience sharing, and critical reflection, all grounded in open innovation theories. Throughout the week, participants honed their abilities in active listening, empathy, handling challenging situations, and fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders. The goal was to empower them as innovation facilitators capable of steering projects towards success.

Toolkit for Innovation Facilitators

As a result of the training, the participants gained invaluable insights and hands-on experience with various facets of an innovation facilitator’s toolkit, from facilitating living labs for Santé & Territoires to managing innovation platforms for IRRINN and ReSiNOC, the trainees left with a wealth of tools and a clear action plan to enhance their roles in their respective DeSIRA projects.

Individualized Action Plans

Upon their departure from Cotonou, each trainee carried with them a personalized action plan crafted during the workshop. These plans will be closely monitored by the DeSIRA-LIFT trainer coaches, who will conduct in-depth sessions in January and February to ensure the trainees’ continued growth and development.

Future Cohorts and Global Reach

The Cotonou workshop marked the beginning of the DeSIRA-LIFT service offering for innovation facilitators, setting the stage for four additional cohorts. The upcoming sessions are scheduled in Madagascar (January ´24), Cameroon (February ´24), Colombia (March ´24), and Ethiopia (April ´24). The anticipation is high, and interested individuals are encouraged to stay tuned for information on registrations.

The inaugural training in Cotonou laid the foundation for DeSIRA-LIFT’s service offering and initiated a transformative learning pathway for the first cohort. As the program expands its reach to other parts of the globe, the impact of these trained innovation facilitators is expected to resonate across diverse projects, bringing about positive change and fostering a culture of innovation. For more details and to stay informed about upcoming training opportunities, please contact the team at service@desiralift.org.

This regional event for all DeSIRA projects in Latin America and the Caribbean will be organised in three components: a day of exchanges between projects aimed at identifying common lessons, a day of contacts with third parties with whom to continue or scale up DeSIRA innovations, a day with regional and international organisations to feed the agenda of sustainable agricultural innovations in favour of climate and biodiversity.

More on the webpage of the event

16:00-18:00 CEST – Session bilingue pour les projets en Afrique francophone et hispanophones notamment en Amérique Latine et Caraïbe – Sesión bilingüe para proyectos en África francófona e hispanohablante, especialmente en América Latina y el Caribe.

Objectifs du webinaire – Objetivos del webinar:

10:00-12:00 CEST English session for DeSIRA Projects in Asia, East and English-speaking Africa

Objectives of the webinar:

Registration link

• Projects often operate in isolation based on specific agendas and aggregate some “schools of thinking” along specific targeted topics and would benefit from enhanced coordination and mediation with actors dealing with related topics that can have an incidence on the objectives of the project.
• The transformative potential of projects builds on a trajectory of actions and outcomes that need to be constantly registered and shared as the narrative of the project. This narrative that builds the theory of change also serves the purpose of advocating about the project with policy makers, which is a lengthy and sometimes slow process, depending how close or far the project is from targeted policy makers.
• Closeness helps informal and almost to permanent feeding of information to policy makers. Some of them may become involved in the project. Where policy makers are more distant from the project, for instance at regional or continental levels, a structured strategy has to be put in place.
• Policy outcomes are often broader than thought and can encompass, inter alia, renewed policies including the signature or adherence to international commitments, the creation of intermediary bodies, changes in processes and management of governmental agencies.
• Policy outcomes often happen based on policy windows where substantial change can be decided or implemented. These policy windows appear at their own pace onto which projects have very limited control. At the level of projects this requires to always be ready to engage and provide substantial information for policy makers to make decisions. This information should consist of robust data and sometimes capacity building and involvement of policy makers into projects, to ensure their best assessment and ownership of outcomes.
• Projects constantly seek this connection and coordination with policy makers and their agendas are most often designed to be aligned with those of the countries. However, some countries loosely enforce the agendas to which they are committed therefore putting projects in the complex situation of being custodians of those – often international – commitments for which they have limited resources. Donor funding and vigilance however brings support to projects as funding is provided to meet certain objectives agreed upon with the countries.
• Continued funding also ensures continuity in the generation of outcomes with projects building on results of previous ones and maintaining their trajectory. This length of time helps policy decision making processes maturing and provides repeated opportunities for policy windows to appear, even in situations where initial limited policy interest has narrowed projects to data collection.
• Trade-offs sometimes mean to let go of planned approaches to ensure that projects stick to an environment which is by nature changing. Projects that ensure from the onset that their activities are chosen based on converging points between national and international agendas, co-designed with beneficiaries, and where policy or decision makers are embedded in the project, are in a better position to seize policy windows when they appear while having less difficulties and needs to adjust.

Discussion

• How much does the situation of your project resounds with these takeaways?
• Have some sort of tensions or misalignment occurred between the innovation agendas supported by your project in the context where they are implemented and broader innovation agendas ? What were the circumstances ?
• How have you managed to plan and develop strategies to help synchronize agendas, using project activities as drivers for collective action ?

The recordings and presentations of the Webinar are available on the dedicated page.

DeSIRA LIFT specialists Ricardo Ramírez, Renaud Guillonnet and Priscila Henríquez participated in the meeting. Ramírez presented elements of the Theory of Change (ToC) and Utilization Focused Evaluation (UFE) in support of the consortium’s efforts, which elicited a rich conversation as the project documents its outcomes and potential impact. DeSIRA LIFT experts have been coaching members of the consortium in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to help inform decisions and improve the project’s performance. Each organization also presented the advances made in the project implementation and consolidated a joint action plan for the coming years.

Sustenta and Innova is carried out in the State of Pará, located in micro-regions in the territory of Marajó and counties along the Trans-Amazon Highway (Xingu territory) and Belém-Brasília territory (Rio Capim region). It is hoped that this project will have a long-term effect on encouraging the sustainable use of land, strengthening local entrepreneurs and encouraging sustainable businesses in the Amazon.

For the PowerPoint presentation of the meeting, please see here