EVENTS ORGANIZED

- Kick-Off Meeting | Accra, Ghana

- Roundtable Discussion | Accra, Ghana

- 1st Webinar on Rural Transformation Policies | Online

- The Europe | North African Chapter | Cairo Egypt

- Stakeholder Engagement Event | Addis, Ethiopia

- FNSSA & Clustering | Addis, Ethiopia

EVENTS ATTENDED

- SANBio Annual Event - Pretoria, South Africa

- The role of agriculture in Agenda 2030 | Stockholm, Sweden

- 15th CAADP PARTNERSHIP PLATFORM  | Nairobi, Kenya

- ICA Rectors and Deans Forum 2019 | Beauvais, France

- 4th Agricultural Extension Week | Abidjan, Ivory Coast

- AU-EU HLPD Stakeholder Meeting | Addis, Ethiopia

ALLIANCES & NETWORKS INITIATED

- North African Dialogue

Nutrition Security

Africa’s biggest “digital dividend” lies in its rural areas, argues new report.
New study by Malabo Montpellier Panel outlines huge scope for investment across agricultural value chain, allowing African farmers to leapfrog into modern practices. KIGALI, Rwanda – Digital innovations could transform African rural areas and agriculture while tackling many of the continent’s other emerging challenges, from youth unemployment, food insecurity and the need for further economic growth

Food Security

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA): ‘Food Systems are failing starting from Food Security.
In the last 3 years, the number of people going hungry in Africa has grown to about 34.5M. This is attributed to climate emergency that has reduced yield of key crops like maize by up to 40% in some regions’
- Dr. Agnes_Kalibata.

Sustainable agriculture

Democratizing Data for Farmers.
On fields across the world, phones, tablets, drones, and other technologies are changing how food is grown. Through these devices, artificial intelligence (AI)—technology able to perform tasks that require human intelligence—may help farmers use the techniques they already know and trust on a bigger scale. And Big Data—data sets that reveal telling patterns about growth, yield, weather, and more—may help farmers make better decisions before crises strike.

According to the report “Refresh: Food + Tech, From Soil to Supper”, AI and Big Data may help produce more food, use less water, limit resource consumption, redirect food waste, and lower food prices—all while improving the lives and incomes of farmers and food producers.

The webinar tackled the policy making segment of the FNSSA sectors by shedding the light on the recently released report of the Task Force Rural Africa “An Africa-Europe Agenda for Rural Transformation”.

The Report stresses the importance of good policy as the key to developing the agri-food sector and rural areas, and here Europe and Africa can draw on their rich capacities and experience. It also recommends to directly involve farmers, cooperatives, civil society, and the private sector in policymaking and in their own futures.

This webinar also informed about the outcomes of the June 2019 meeting of ministers of agriculture from Europe and Africa who discussed this report.

Two topics were chosen to reflect both EU and AU perspectives, which are: “The changing EU Africa Political Relationship” and “Mainstreaming Policies into actions and Programmes.” The webinar was led by: Dr. Bruno Losch – CIRAD and Dr. Irene Frempong – FARA.

The discussion was guided to introduce the following topics:

LEAP4FNSSA Project Outline and Main Actions, Webinars Series Outline, The changing EU Africa political relationship, The context for African and European policies and governance for agriculture, EU’s trading relationship with Africa and policy coherence for development, Mainstreaming Policies into actions and Programmes, Strategic Challenges facing African Rural transformation, Gaps in the Development and Implementation of FNSSA Policies, A brief on the actions of the AGRI-Food and Rural Agenda.

“The North Africa Event” was held in Cairo (Egypt) on 28th October 2019. The event was organized by LEAP4FNSSA project with the support of the Agricultural Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. This event took place in the frame of the 10th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security, a 2-days event that ran on the 29th and the 30th October under the theme “Towards Ending Hunger in Africa: Leveraging New Agricultural Technologies for Improved African Diets”.

The event was opened by the welcome address of H.E. Ambassador Ivan Surkos, Head of European Union Delegation to Egypt and H.E. Prof. Dr. Ezz El Din Abu Steit, Minister of Agriculture & Land Reclamation. The theme adopted for the Europe/ North Africa Chapter activities, and which will be developed in form of research and innovation activities to carry by collaborations between Europe and North Africa is “Innovative Value Chains for Traditional Agrifood Products“.

Egyptian Prime minister and Agricultural Minister, such as many African delegates and AU representatives, visited the LEAP4FNSSA stand. This gave the opportunity to better explain LEAP4FNSSA objectives and to confirm the launch of the Europe/ North African chapter

The North African participants of the LEAP4FNSSA North Africa Event agreed on launching collaborative regional research programmes in form of a public private alliance of partners between Europe and North Africa to develop joint food and nutrition security research and innovation projects within the AU–EU Partnership.

A regional sustainable partnership platform will foster clustering and enhances synergies.

 The participants identified mechanisms, priorities for action and triggering innovations to be embodied in the regional platform.

They emphasized the need to address the topics of climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as natural resource management and the interdependency of water, food and energy.

Adoption of value chain approaches within given territories of the region was recommended. Innovative financial mechanisms for farmers and comprehensive insurance systems must be designed and implemented.

 Triggering innovation by expanding the use of information technology, knowledge management and dissemination and agricultural extension have been highlighted.

 Necessity of supporting research linkages to the private sector and to policy making as well as securing its funding have been recognized.

 Establishing novel farmers producers organizations is key to enable rural development and to achieve transformational changes.

The successful conclusion of the launching event of the Leap4FNSSA within the Africa Food Day Commemoration in Cairo, will enable the rapid launch of its Europe / North Africa Chapter

The AU-EU High Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) serves as a policy platform for regular exchanges on research and innovation policies and aims to formulate and implement long-term priorities to strengthen Africa-Europe cooperation on STI. The HLPD so far focuses on the implementation of its two long-term, jointly funded Research and Innovation (R&I) Partnerships on (i) Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FNSSA) and (ii) Climate Change and Sustainable Energy (CCSE), as well as on the important topic of health represented by the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).

LEAP4FNSSA used the HLPD SOM (Senior Official Meeting) which was held on the 7th and 8th of November in Addis Ababa as a facilitating mechanism for various stakeholder engagements to highlight progress in implementation of the AU EU FNSSA Roadmap; explore the key cross-cutting areas highlighted in the recent AU-EU Summit and its role in effective implementation of this Roadmap; convene specific stakeholders to further highlight areas for improvement; identify possible partners that are not part of the project that could support implementation broadly, and possible synergies between FNSSA relevant projects that are currently under implementation.

The informal Stakeholder Event on 6th November 2019 was held at the headquarters of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It gave interested stakeholders the opportunity to engage with relevant actors from politics, science and industry on topics related to African-European STI cooperation.

The event started with an opening by the co- chairs of the Meeting, AUC HRST Director Dr Mahama Ouedraogo and EC DG RTD Deputy Head of Unit Ms Fadila Boughanemi.

Afterwards a session on Collaborative research roadmaps was held which covered the topics of FNSSA and CCSE as well as the Monitoring & Evaluation across the HLPD STI activities.

Next there was a detailed presentation of the AU/EU collaborative projects achievements as well as AU/EU funding opportunities including the AUC Research Grants, New ERA-NET FOSC, New CCSE call for proposals, GMES and Africa consortia, Intra ACP research programme by EU DG DEVCO, Digital Economy by EU DG CNECT, EDCTP2 Partnership, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions by EU DG EAC and Horizon Europe.

Finally several Parallel workshop sessions were organized:

- Knowledge is the key/AU-EU Innovation Partnership - - FNSSA projects clustering
- CCSE

A 2-hour parallel session with the title “FNSSA and clustering” took place during the HLPD Stakeholder Meeting on 6 November. The session explored the opportunities for clustering of research and innovation projects towards the implementation of the AU EU FNSSA Roadmap, and the various types of added values clustering offers to the different kinds of stakeholders in the Partnership. Knowledge management tools (database and KMS) produced in the LEAP4FNSSA project for the implementation of clustering activities were presented, giving the opportunity to the workshop participants to reflect on their own priority needs for clustering, to express their expectations and to discuss how the expectations can be met.

The workshop was guided in the following order:

• First a presentation by (Ioannis Dimitriou, SLU/Shadrack Moephuli, ARC) on the Clustering of Projects in LEAP4FNSSA: ideas and ways forward.

• Next was another presentation on Tools for implementation: LEAP4FNSSA database.by (Ioannis Dimitriou, SLU)

• A last presentation was given by (Shadrack Moephuli, ARC) on the topic of Tools for implementation: LEAP4FNSSA Knowledge Management System (KMS)
  
  Finally a general discussion was held with active contribution from the public focusing on three questions; (1) What expectations and priority needs do you see for clustering of projects; (ii) How would you like to be involved in the clustering of projects? (iii) What kind of outputs do you expect from the database and KMS and how would you use it in your work? The session was concluded by thanking all participants for their rich and diverse inputs. These will help LEAP4FNSSA to further develop an appropriate and relevant FNSSA Projects clustering approach. the

1st International Conference on Food, Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.
Cairo, Egypt  1-3 December 2019
The conference will focus on the recent trends and discoveries in the area of functional foods, nutraceuticals, food safety, food security, sustainable agriculture, and agro-food engineering and technology.

RUFORUM 15th Annual General Meeting
Cape Coast – 2-6 December 2019
The 15th Annual General Meeting of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture will be held from 2-6 December, 2019: it will be the first AGM to be hosted in West Africa

1st Subregional dissemination meeting towards decision makers and R&I funders | Nairobi – January 2020
This event will highlight FNSSA R&I topics for Kenya and its neighbourhood countries, building a regional network of the relevant actors, and start identifying (and possibly recruiting) parties interested to join the EU AU FNSSA partnership.  
Since December 2nd, 2019, an open consultation will collect feedback and different points of view about food, nutrition and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA). The results of the questionnaire will guide the debate during the meeting.