Lusaka, 27th January 2023
ANAPRI experts from 16 member institutions of 15 African countries have taken part in two capacity building workshops held in Lusaka and Nairobi in the same week. These activities took place from the 24th to the 27th of January 2022.
In Lusaka, the training was sponsored by GIZ, with a focus on promoting a tool called the Agripolicykit, which allows policy advisers and makers to quickly get an overview of potential policy solutions for their country-specific challenges. The agri-food sector is diverse and requires knowledge of agricultural plant and animal production as well as trade, markets, price, hygiene and health, water management, social security, financing, mechanisation, logistics and transport, communication, energy and more. The AgripolicyKit takes this diversity into account and provides decision-makers and their advisors with a platform that neutrally portrays a wide variety of instruments used in the context of the agri-food sector worldwide.
Speaking on behalf of GIZ, Dr Marco Hartmann called on ANAPRI participants to use the training opportunity as an avenue for learning new skills and techniques capable of enabling them to contribute to the policy landscape upon return to their home countries. On behalf of ANAPRI, Dr. Nalishebo Meebelo, Executive Director at the ANAPRI Secretariat, through a statement read on her behalf by Dr. Zena Mpenda, extended gratitude to GIZ for sponsoring ANAPRI participants to Zambia for the training. She called on the Research Directors present to use the training opportunity to boost their capacity in acquiring new strategies capable of addressing the persistent and emerging challenges facing the continent’s food system. The two days intensive training which took place from the 26-27th of January 2023 ended with a call for participants to use the learnings to contribute to policy influence in their home countries.
During the same week, Nairobi played host to another group of ANAPRI experts who took part in the CGIAR Foresight Partnership Forum. The Foresight Partnership Forum brought together key partners from across Eastern and Southern Africa to explore challenges facing food, land, and water systems at national, regional, and global scales; identify opportunities to share and strengthen capacity for foresight; and, examine ways to use foresight tools and analysis to inform policy making. The Forum on 24-25 January was followed by a training session on country development and policy modeling for partners on 26-27 January 2023. ANAPRI experts made their mark during the Forum in the following sessions:
- Welcome, Keynotes, and Overview – Prof. Gideon Obare, ANAPRI Board Member and Executive Director, Tegemeo Institute.
- Opportunities and Challenges for National Agri-Food Systems – Prof. Ferdi Meyer, ANAPRI Board Member and Managing Director, BFAP
- Global and Regional Trends Affecting Food, Land, and Water Systems – Dr. Tracy Davids – Manager: Commodity Markets & Foresight – BFAP and Dr. Tinah Moyo – ANAPRI Research Director, ATPI
- Strengthening Foresight and Modeling Capacity and Access to Tools – Dr. Jackson Langat, Research Fellow – Tegemeo Institute
- Stakeholder Engagement, Analysis, and Foresight as a Process – Prof. Adegbenga Adekoya, ANAPRI Board Member and Director of PiLAF
Two days of the Forum were spent on training in the use of foresight modeling tools in the context of major challenges facing national food, land, and water systems. The training course was an introduction to economywide modeling, which includes both SAM-based multiplier analysis and CGE modeling.
These events will add value to ANAPRI’s mission aimed at playing an active role in transforming Africa’s food system by developing the capacity of national agricultural policy research Institutes in the continent, strengthening and nurturing dynamic collaboration, towards providing objective and innovative policy advice to national, regional and continental levels.
