From 17th to 22nd April 2023, the AIRTEA Project of Strengthening Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Ecosystem for Inclusive Rural Transformation, and Livelihoods in Eastern Africa held its annual review meeting with its third-party projects from Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.
Africa’s agriculture is largely sustained by smallholder farmers, half of whom are women. However, poor access to markets and information on supply and demand prevents them from attaining sustainable farming livelihoods. And the expectation of low profits also discourages young people from taking up agricultural activities.
The AIRTEA project seeks to achieve increased involvement of women and youth in East Africa in linking multi-stakeholder innovation platforms (IPs) to practical solutions within national, regional, and global food systems.
The annual review meeting aims to present preliminary results achieved by third-party projects during their first year of activities, draw and share lessons learned, bring out potential areas of synergies for better impact and strengthen their technical and financial capacity for improved implementation of their activities.
(From left to right: Kwaku Antwi, AIRTEA Project manager, from FARA; Elizabeth Kizito, Project manager of the Third Party project African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs) presenting its activities and first results; some AIRTEA stakeholders)
(Photos taken during a field visit of the third-party project led by the Uganda Christian University (UCU) and titled “Enhancing inclusive market access for African Indigenous Vegetables (AIV), seed and value-added products by Smallholder farmers in Uganda”- UCU has notably partnered with Psalms Food Industries (SUMZ) to provide farmer groups with pumpkin seeds worth 240 acres. Previously, the majority of these farmers could not access such players because they own small pieces of land, about 0.5 to 1 acre. Now these farmer groups are able to have 30 times more than their normal production and negotiate prices with bigger industry players.)
(Visit of another third-party project AGRENES -Agriculture, Environment, and Ecosystems- leading the Dairy farm innovation hub in Mityana. Technologies such as charcoal briquettes from Biogas, hay, feed pellets, silage, drought tolerant cowshed are used in this dairy innovation centre that promotes zero-waste management)
AIRTEA is led by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), in partnership with the Association of Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and the Eastern Farmers Federation (EAFF). It is one of the 12 projects supported by the ACP Innovation Fund, with funding from the European Union.
They talked about it:
