UNDP/AGRA catalytic grants have proven benefits for farming cooperatives in the groundnut value chain in Malawi
19 May 2023
The 12 country projects are connected by the Regional Hub, a cross-cutting unit whose core focus is to coordinate the country projects, ensure cross-project learning and collaboration, and monitor and assess programmatic progress.
Partners
AGRA, Bioversity International – CIAT Alliance, Conservation International, FAO, ICRAF, UNDP, UN Environment
Resilient Food Systems’ Regional Hub is a cross-cutting unit whose core focus is to coordinate across the 12 implementing countries to ensure learning and scaling-up of sustainable technologies and interventions on smallholder farms. In collaboration with a range of partners and via existing platforms in sub-Saharan Africa, the Regional Hub helps address institutional and policy barriers for the inclusion of ecosystem services approaches into policies and investments for improved and sustainable smallholder agriculture and food value chains.
The focus is on facilitation of dialogue, models, metrics, and practices which bridge the agricultural and environmental agendas at various scales. This involves, where possible, strengthening of existing partnerships and institutional frameworks, learning and scaling successful methods and facilitating the creation and strengthening of multi-stakeholder science and policy platforms in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Regional Hub relies on the efforts of a range of partners, each responsible for contributing towards one of the Hub’s four core objectives:
1. Create and strengthen integrated institutional frameworks and mechanisms for scaling up proven approaches.
Regional Hub partners UN Environment and FAO help address institutional and policy barriers to the inclusion of ecosystem services approaches into policies and investments for improved and sustainable smallholder agriculture and food value chains.
2. Identify and scale up successful integrated approaches for making food systems more sustainable and resilient.
Regional Hub partners UNDP and AGRA use a value chain (VC) approach to identify and scale up best practices for “greening” food value chains, while FAO provides capacity development and technical support to countries for strengthening agricultural advisory services.
3. Monitor and assess global environmental benefits and agro-ecosystem resilience.
Regional Hub partners Conservation International, UN Environment and Bioversity International – CIAT Alliance are responsible for monitoring the global environmental benefits of the programme and strengthening the capacity of country projects to apply appropriate tools and practices for monitoring and assessment.
4. Coordinate, report, and perform general management functions across RFS projects to enhance programmatic impact, visibility, and coherence.
Within the Regional Hub, the Programme Coordination Unit, run by ICRAF, coordinates the linkages between all 12 country projects and is responsible for programme-wide knowledge management and communication activities.
Each RFS project conducts activities that fall under common thematic areas within the programme. Explore each project theme relevant to the Regional Hub project below to see which activities are being implemented under each theme.
Learn more about the activities being implemented under the Regional Hub. Stay up-to-date on key workshops, events, and lessons learned throughout the programme.
Relevant resources
We have a growing library of reports, briefs, case studies, media, tools and guidelines. Explore all resources related to the Regional Hub to get greater insight into our programme activities.
Resilient Food Systems (RFS) country project representatives, partners and Consultative Committee members are invited along with other practitioners to the RFS Final Workshop, to be combined with a Science-Policy Knowledge Exchange Day capitalizing on RFS learnings for improved policy advocacy in Africa.
This document outlines the draft agenda of the Workshop from 6-8 June 2023.
This draft version was up to date as of 23 May 2023.
In 2022, the RFS programme made significant progress toward enhancing the long-term resilience and sustainability of smallholder farming systems. The 2022 Programme Highlights report showcases the achievements and innovations of the RFS regional partners, country project teams and beneficiary communities in 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The 2022 reporting period was marked by our efforts to enhance the sustainability and scaling of project interventions. 2022 saw the completion of 8 country projects and continual actions by the remaining projects to implement further sustainability measures and keep the programme benefits going. This report captures and highlights the considerable learning and knowledge that has been generated, shared and possible by the collective efforts of all RFS partners.
The stakeholders from the Resilient Food Systems programme met in Blantyre, Malawi in September 2022 to attend the Annual Knowledge Exchange & Learning Workshop.
The 4-day workshop consisted of jointly-designed learning labs, sessions from Hub partners, and an interactive evidence and experience wall. The RFS Malawi team also hosted the participants on a field trip to visit their project sites in Zomba and Phalombe districts.