Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems – CDAIS

The CDAIS project is a global partnership for promoting agricultural innovation in order to improve living conditions in rural areas.

Start date

01/01/2015

End date

31/08/2019

Objectives

The objective of the CDAIS project is to demonstrate that functional-capacity building of actors in agricultural innovation systems (capacity to collaborate, to engage in political and strategic processes, to manage innovation, to experiment and to learn) can best help meet the needs of producers and consumers, thus significantly improving the living conditions of rural populations.

The project is being implemented jointly by FAO and Agrinatura, a consortium of about 30 European universities and research centres, including CIRAD.

Location

CIRAD is responsible for the implementation of the project in Laos and Burkina Faso (in collaboration with FAO).

Description

A pilot functional-capacity building approach is being tested and adapted in eight countries: Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos and Rwanda.

It is based primarily on a ‘change-oriented approach’ that aims to support learning in processes of complex change: enabling actor engagement, building a vision, developing an action strategy and a theory of change, monitoring and evaluating learning in order to reorient action. Special emphasis is laid on:

participatory characterization of capacity building needs at different levels: individual, organizational and collective within ‘innovation partnerships’;
building up of national skills to support innovation processes: training of facilitators and managers of innovation.

The results are expected to contribute to the development of national action plans in each country for building capacity to innovate through the identification of support services for innovation that will need to be developed or created. At the global level, the results are expected to provide inputs to the action plan of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP).

Partners

For the implementation of the project across the world:

International Center for Development oriented Research in Agronomy (ICRA), coordinator of the CDAIS project
Agrinatura - EEIG - The European Alliance on Agricultural Knowledge for Development
National Resources Institute (University of Greenwich)
Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (FAO)
Istituto Agronomico per l'Oltremare (IAO Florence)
Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA Lisebonne)
Centre de Coopération Internationale pour la Recherche Agronomique et pour le Développement (CIRAD)

In Burkina Faso:

MESRSI (Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation) is coordinating the project
FAO is providing support for project implementation
CEDRES, University of Ouaga 2 and INERA are collaborating to design approaches and tools to support innovation, capacity building, and monitoring and evaluation of learning

In Laos: