Agricultural Research for development in support of Rural Innovation - Capacity Strengthening in ARD

A main element of ICRA’s strategy to promote ARD is development of national “Core Teams” of ARD facilitators that can take the lead in facilitating ARD learning at national level. And one of the ways in which we help country partnerships develop these Core Teams is through our regular team building programmes in Wageningen (The Netherlands) and Montpellier (France).

The capacity building programmes in Wageningen and Montpellier are directed towards expanding and strengthening the capacity of individuals and national inter-institutional core teams that will play a specific role in their respective national institutional change processes.

We suggest that Core Teams include mandated representatives of the main institutions involved in promoting rural innovation through research, development and teaching. They may include for example representatives of the national agricultural research organisation, the ministries related to agriculture, prominent agricultural university faculties, and farmer organisations. Not only do the different perspectives of these different backgrounds enhance exchange and collective learning during our learning programmes in Europe, but each of these institutions will have a role to play if ARD learning and practice are to be successfully promoted by the Core Team.

In the case of national Core Teams, capacity building through the Europe-based programmes is preceded by in-country preparatory activities. These include the establishment of a national inter-institutional platform (NIP) or task force (TF) and the development of a strategic vision on the institutionalization of ARD and on ways of building and using strengthened ARD capacity to achieve this. The NIP/TF select core teams that participate in the Europe-based ICRA programmes. They come with an (inter-) institutional mandate and terms of reference for their future role.

While at ICRA, programme participants will not only become familiar with the concepts, approaches and methods of ARD, but will also learn to design and coordinate new experiential ARD learning programmes for their own countries. The Europe-base programmes thus serve to gradually form a critical mass of expertise in ARD that will act as the focal point for ARD in the partner countries.

After the involvement in the Europe-based programme, the Core Teams will continue to build awareness of ARD approaches and collectively expand national (in-country) ARD capacity programmes that will contribute to building institutional capacity in ARD concepts, approaches and methodologies in support of collective rural innovation programmes that are aimed at promoting sustainable development.

Structure of the programme

Our tailor-made programmes are broken down into distinct components depending on the specific requirements of each country partnership.

Normally, we base each programme on a “knowledge acquisition phase” of approximately 7 to 10-weeks. This component, based in Wageningen or Montpellier, includes a sequence of workshops integrated with a field exercise in which you will interact with stakeholders from a local agribusiness production and value chain. In the workshops, you will improve your team skills, learn how to analyse a complex development challenge from the perspectives of different stakeholders and disciplines, and how to identify and develop strategies and plans for collective action to improve the situation. During this phase, you will work intensively in small groups, exchanging ideas and experience with others in your Core Team as well as with participants from other countries. You will also be expected to reflect upon your learning and how you will organise and facilitate such learning in your own institute and country.

Depending on the collective wishes of your country institutions represented in the Core Team, ICRA also facilitates a team assignment focussing on a specific development challenge or agricultural production and value chain within your own country. This is when it “gets real” - when you will put into practice all those concepts and ideas learned in Wageningen in the context of your own country! In the case of individual participants to the programme this may be a team assignment in another country. This component can vary in length, but typically consists of an intensive period of between 6 and 10 weeks in which you will interact with stakeholders at farm, communal, district and national level to develop a collective vision of what is desirable, and a collective plan to enhance innovation – which will be acted upon by your partnership. During this phase, ICRA will provide guidance and support to the team through visiting consultancies.

A third component of the ICRA programme, which may either be conducted immediately after the knowledge acquisition phase, or after the home country field assignment, is where you or your team will develop a (national) strategy to promote ARD. This strategy may include increasing awareness of ARD at a national level, how to “mainstream” these approaches within the research, development and education mandates of your different institutions, as well as how to build capacity in ARD through in-service or formal academic programmes.

Follow-up

Our involvement with you does not end when you leave Wageningen or Montpellier. At least, we hope not! We are committed to helping you implement all those good ideas and action plans you developed while you were in Wageningen. We hope we can continue to strengthen our partnership through joint projects and activities to integrate ARD thinking into professional development and action within your country. We will support you with your efforts to integrate experiential learning, ARD concepts and approaches into your ongoing professional development programmes or academic curricula at undergraduate and postgraduate level. We will work with you to seek external funding to achieve this. We know all this will not be easy, but working together, and networking with similar initiatives in other countries, we can begin to change the ways things are done and improve the processes of rural development in your country.

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Next programme on multi-stakeholder processes for knowledge-based rural innovation: 3 March - 31 May 2014, Wageningen, the Netherlands.

Leaflets

Generic one-page leaflet (pdf, 189K)

For the individual course brochures go to the specific course; see links in the left-hand column.