Applied Research Fund country workshop in Benin

An Applied Research Fund (ARF) country workshop will take place in Benin on November 20 to 22, 2019. Most of the eleven ARF projects running in Benin have finalized or are about to be finished. They will share their lessons learned and discuss issues related to result uptake and scaling opportunities. The workshop is organized by NWO-WOTRO, in collaboration with the Food & Business Knowledge Platform, University of Abomey-Calavi (Faculty of Agronomic Science) and AgriProFocus Benin.

The Food & Business ARF addresses the knowledge and research needs of partners in the bilateral food security programmes of the 15 Dutch development cooperation partner countries and focuses on food security as a local challenge. The areas of interest and objectives of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs form the focal points of the ARF projects. The projects develop new solutions for practical problems in the partner countries. They aim to help the most vulnerable populations, and to align with the strategic plans of the Embassies. All research is jointly conducted by local practitioners’ organizations and research or higher education institutes.

The projects integrate the knowledge of practitioners and scientists in joint research (co-creation). In this way, project teams generate new insights that really can add value through new products, processes, services, technologies or policies. In order to increase the chance of success, all teams describe, before the start, how their activities will contribute to outcomes and impacts, with verifiable indicators for the output and outcome levels.

You can find an overview of all ARF projects here.

Country workshop

All ARF projects situated in Benin will come together from November 20 to 22, 2019 to take stock of the insights and outcomes and to jointly reflect, learn and work on further uptake of results and scaling opportunities.

The first workshop day is an internal ARF project day and is designed to share lessons learned among the projects and best practices for change and scaling. The second day, a public dialogue will take place with the overall theme “Strengthening Benin Food and Nutrition Security in policy and practice – Scaling innovations from agricultural research”. During this day, the ARF project consortia will showcase their insights and outcomes followed by a discussion on specific themes with a broad group of external stakeholders from policy and practice in order to facilitate scaling. The workshop finishes on the third day with a field trip to a pineapple farm (Agronomic and processing practices for pineapple in Benin) and a pineapple processing unit, part of the DAPIS project.

Factsheets

Please find below the factsheets published by the projects in Benin sharing their final or midterm results.

Applied Research Fund Call 1

• Improved varieties of spider plant for Africa (Benin and Kenya): factsheet with final findings.
• Agroecological food resources for healthy infant nutrition in Benin (INFLOR): factsheet with final findings.

Applied Research Fund Call 2

• Improving resilience of inland fisher communities in Benin: factsheet with final findings.
• Ensuring food security by enhancing rice value-chain Benin (PARCR): factsheet with final findings.
• Agronomic and processing practices for pineapple in Benin (DAPIS): factsheet with final findings.
• Towards an efficient soybean food chain in Benin (ProSeSS): factsheet with final findings.

Applied Research Fund Call 3

• Valorisation of Moringa leaves to alleviate malnutrition in vulnerable groups in Benin (FortiMoringa): factsheet with final findings.
• Efficient fish feeds to enable emergence of catfish breeding in Benin (ProfishBenin): factsheet with final findings.
• Diffusion of promising plantain varieties in Benin: factsheet with final findings.
• Promoting dye sorghum cultivation in Benin (Dyegrain): factsheet with final findings.
• Enhancing Kersting’s groundnut production-marketability in Benin (Doyiwé): factsheet with final findings.