History
The Regional Network of Agricultural Policy Research Institutes (ReNAPRI) is a regionally coordinated group of 16 national agricultural policy research centers located in 15 countries, in central, east, west, and southern Africa. ReNAPRI collaborates closely with other global partners, think tanks and stakeholders.
Formed on 16th November 2012 in Lusaka, Zambia, ReNAPRI was launched through the initiative of 7 national agricultural policy research institutions, based in east and southern Africa, following a series of intensive formal and informal consultations. The founders of this network initially recognized the need for a regional think tank, in 2009 when CAADP and other related frameworks were beginning to gain momentum in the continent, promoting evidence-based policymaking.
ReNAPRI was designed to enable network members to effectively collaborate in providing solutions towards addressing the common challenges facing their region, and to enable national policymakers to learn from the experiences of other countries within the region.
Even though countries in this region had their own national agricultural policy research institutes, they were not coordinating with each other in a manner that was structured, efficient or effective. This was due to the absence of a platform for regionally coordinated policy analysis, outreach and capacity building activities - a regional mechanism for linking the national agricultural policy institutes to enable them to communicate with each other, share information, collaborate on research and outreach activities, was limiting the national institutes in realizing their goals and objectives of providing practical solutions to the policy challenges facing their member states.
The centers therefore agreed to establish a network, to share data, approaches, methods, and information, and to build one another’s capacities, towards generating high quality evidence-based recommendations for policy making at both national and regional levels.
Registered in Lusaka Zambia since 2014, the network has since expanded to a membership of sixteen (16) centers including English, French, and Portuguese speaking countries, and officially launched its Secretariat in 2019.
With the demand for network’s services across the entire continent, to serve not only national governments, but also the African Union Commission and Regional Economic Communities, the Board of Directors of ReNAPRI elected to expand the membership of the network to other regions of Africa.
ReNAPRI is designed to respond to the policy research and outreach coordination gap facing the African continent in its effort towards strengthening the food system.
