South Africa Country Platform
Prolinnova-South Africa’s first National Workshop was postponed from 2004 to 2005 and was held in February, back to back with a POG (Prolinnova Oversight Group) meeting. The workshop had 20 participants representing different stakeholder groups and led to a comprehensive action plan for the next years. A well-written brochure with information on local innovation in South Africa collected in 2004 was published early 2005 and launched during the national workshop.
Regarding the institutionalisation of the participatory innovation development (PID) approach, the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) agreed to incorporate PID into its capacity-building programme for researchers.
The Prolinnova-South Africa coordinator presented the experience of the Country Platform (CP) at different occasions. She presented case studies at two conferences on agricultural research & development (ARD) in Switzerland and Uganda, and participated in the formation of a NGO Consortium for ARD in Sub-Saharan Africa (in a side event of a FARA meeting in Uganda).
The CP sees as main challenges: the coordination of such a national programme with limited resources, core-team members living quite far apart, and the demands from many international initiatives and opportunities, while still having to manage their own institutions. A platform coordinator is being recruited to address these challenges.
Finally, the CP played a leading role in developing the proposal on Local Innovation Support Funds to DURAS (France).
