21 November 2016
Funded by the UK Department for International Development, the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning in Africa (SAIRLA) programme is a five-year £8 million programme (2015 to 2020) that seeks to generate new evidence and design tools to enable governments, investors and other key actors to deliver more effective policies and investments in sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) that strengthen the capacity of poorer farmers’, especially women and youth, to access and benefit from SAI. SAIRLA has commissioned 8 research projects and will facilitate social learning to enhance diverse stakeholders’ understanding of and perspectives on different ways of achieving SAI and its developmental implications, across the 6 target countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia).
As part of the Programme’s multi-stakeholder social learning – the SAIRLA Learning Alliance – we are holding the inaugural cross-Africa Learning Alliance meeting in Lilongwe, Malawi from Tuesday 22nd to Thursday 24th November. The SAIRLA Learning Alliance is a social learning platform / network which will develop a strategy to build institutional capacity to share the lessons from the research programme and stakeholder experience to inform policy and investment processes across Sub-Saharan Africa. The strategy will be developed and implemented between the SAIRLA management, the funded research projects, the National Learning Alliances and wider project partners. The Learning Alliance will both integrate knowledge and also develop collective capacity to inform policy and investment processes.
The roles of the International Learning Alliance will be to:
i. Identify and convene partner organizations with an interest in Sustainable Agricultural Intensification;
ii. Collectively design and implement a learning and engagement strategy for the SAIRLA Learning Alliance informed by and building upon the National Learning Alliance strategies, research project aims and overall SAIRLA goals;
iii. Design and implement a strategy for the Learning Alliance to inform decision makers across Africa about what works and does not work in enabling women, youth and poorer smallholders to benefit from SAI.
The SAIRLA Learning Alliance will be developed over the coming three years until the end of 2019, with periodic meetings across different countries in Africa.
You can follow this year’s ILA on Twitter at: #SAIRLA and learn more here: http://www.sairla.nri.org/
WYG and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich are jointly managing the DFID-funded SAIRLA programme.
