Future Agricultures Consortium

Thursday, Sep 09th

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Policy Dialogue

policydialogue3 The Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) aims “to encourage dialogue and the sharing of good practice by policy makers and opinion formers in Africa on the role of agriculture in broad based growth”. Therefore,creating a platform for policy dialogue within and across countries is central to FAC’s work.

Country Co-ordinators and FAC researchers hold both formal and informal meetings with policy-makers to promote networking and research dissemination.

Research dissemination in Kenya

John Omiti participated in dissemination workshops of like-minded institutions and discussed the FAC work on Farmer Organisations and how it would benefit those interested in capacity-building for agricultural commercialisation. One such meeting was a multi-stakeholder meeting on value-chains for agricultural commodities in Nairobi.

As a member of KIPPRA research team working on policy directions for the development of the arid and semi-arid parts of Kenya, John Omiti continues to distribute FAC research materials to other researchers in Kenya – one way to raise the visibility of FAC at country level. Journal and newspaper materials are frequently shared between FAC (UK) and FAC-Kenya. Because of the current bad drought (perhaps the worst in fifty years), many livestock have died and camels are hard-pressed to serve as the last hope for the pastoralist livelihoods.

AGRA Conference - Role of Markets in Spurring African Green Revolution

In May 2009, FAC's John Omiti and Andrew Dorward contributed to an international conference on priority actions for market development for African Farmers. The meeting was jointly organised by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in Nairobi, Kenya.

Network Meetings in Kenya

John Omiti hosted two FAC network meetings to discuss how to move the FAC agenda forward at country level. In the first meeting, four items were discussed:

Collective action in farmer organisations

John Omiti and consortium members participated in an international workshop on

promoting the development of farmer associations in Africa in order to improve delivery of farm inputs (e.g. seed, and fertilizer) and requisite services (extension and financial services) to farmers.

Public private dialogue in africa

John Omiti participated in a high-profile meeting to discuss mechanism, strategies, and lessons learnt in promoting private dialogue in Africa. The symposium attracted government (cabinet) ministers, members of parliament, permanent secretaries, chief executive officers of apex business associations, policy makers, researchers and civil society drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. The meeting was hosted by the Association of Manufacturers (KAM) and the Center for International Private Entrepreneurship (CIPE, USA) in Mombasa, Kenya.