What We DO

As a coordinating body, FARA works through collaboration with its partners, an approach driven by the principle of Subsidiarity, which devolves the implementation of programmes to the Sub-regional organizations and the National Agricultural Research Institutes NARIs.

In implementing its strategy, FARA mobilizes stakeholders around a portfolio of continent-wide programmes and projects jointly developed with the stakeholders, to address specific challenges or opportunities. Currently, FARA is coordinating the following such initiatives

• DONATA Dissemination of New Agricultural Technologies in Africa
• PAEPARD 1 & 2: Platform for African – European Partnership on                Agricultural Research for Development (link to description)
• RAILS: Regional Agricultural Information and Learning Systems
• SSA CP: Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme
• UniBRAIN: Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation
• BiomassWeb & BiomassNet: The first Pan-African expert network on food and non-food biomass
• Adaptation for Future Demands in Agriculture (AFDA)
• Regional Mobility for Capacity Strengthening (ReMoCaSt)
• Africa Human Capital, Science Technology and Agri-preneurship for Food Security Framework (AHC-STAFF)
• Programme for Agricultural Intensification in Africa (PAINT)
• African Special Progamme on the Environment and Agricultural Research (African SPEAR)
• The African Food and Agriculture Policy platform (AFAPP) (link to description)

Going forward with the new strategic (2019-2028) orientation, FARA is embarking on the following new continent-wide roles and programmes in the context of the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa:

• Mandated roles solicited by FARA’s authorizing bodies for leveraging new core funds: FARA’s positioning in this domain is enhanced by its role in the High-Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) Working Group of the EU-AU Bureau for the FNSSA. It is further strengthened by FARA’s role in advocacy through the Building Nutritious Food Basket (BNFB) campaign on biofortification and the AfDB’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT).
• Roles solicited by partners and stakeholders; These include roles demanded by partners in bilaterally-funded interventions or as requested by development partners with an interest in addressing multi-regional and multi-country interventions in Africa. These also include country-focused solicited roles to leverage on domestic resources as exemplified by the backstopping activities undertaken by FARA arising from the implementation of S3A through facilitating the Innovation Platforms or the Policy Practice Index and other instruments. These include:
  • The African Agricultural Research Program (AARP)
  • Supporting Implementation of a Science-Led and Climate-Relevant Agricultural Transformation in Africa (SISTA)