INcluding Smallholders in Agricultural Research for Development (INSARD), with EU support, aims to facilitate a broad range of African and European civil society organisations (CSOs), including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and farmer organisations (FOs), to be actively involved in influencing the formulation and implementation of agricultural research and development (ARD) in Africa.
As part of the policy component of the project, the INSARD consortium has developed an overall strategy and specific plans for policy dialogue by the INSARD partners in Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and at European level. Key informants from a range of ARD organisations were consulted. The INSARD partners agreed on issues and priorities for influencing policy and drew up their plans to engage key stakeholders in policy dialogue. INSARD’s policy objective is to influence the ARD agenda (themes and approaches) and resource allocation processes and actors to include smallholders’ participation, needs and interests. This is being done through engaging in constructive dialogue with key African and European ARD managers and donors. INSARD’s policy work is closely interwoven with its work on research brokerage, building on the linkages established with ARD stakeholders in the three pilot countries. INSARD seeks to be a catalyst: it focuses on positive messages based around successful models of farmer-driven research agendas, such as the Prolinnova example, in seeking to persuade and influence others to continue to push for pro-smallholder changes in ARD policy and practice. The INSARD policy strategy can be found here.
