The purpose of SCARDA is to “strengthen the institutional and human capacity of African agricultural research and development systems to identify, generate and deliver research outputs that meet the needs of poor people”.  Thus, the focus of the Programme will be to sustainably strengthen institutions in order to help them to enhance their relevance and impact.  SCARDA will work with Focal Institutions which have a key strategic role to play within their respective natural agricultural research and development systems.  Focal Institutions identified for the initial phase of SCARDA are national agricultural research institutes, agricultural universities, and agricultural training colleges in Botswana, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Rwanda, and Zambia.   NRI is supporting three African agricultural training institutions in providing capacity strengthening services to the Focal Institutions and their partners.  These are the African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resource Education (ANAFE); Centre Regional de Formation et d’Application en Agrométéorologie et Hydrologie Opérationelle (AGRHYMET); and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM).

 

The Programme will adopt an innovative approach by developing and implementing tailor-made packages of capacity strengthening activities for its target institutions covering the full range of its needs.  A capacity strengthening plan will be developed for each of the Focal Institutions through a detailed analysis of their needs and those of their core research and development partners.  Representatives of partner organisations and of institutions in other countries will participate in selected activities.  In this way, a multi-stakeholder perspective will be incorporated into the Programme and good practice can be shared through the exchange of experiences.  SCARDA’s continental approach will ensure that lessons and best practice from the different sub-regions will be widely shared and that mutual benefits will be captured from this cross-regional learning.

Related Pages

SCARDA Home Page

SCARDA Activities

SCARDA Inception Report