A new 3-year project “Expanding the promotion of local innovation for food security and healthy nutrition to strengthen resilience with a focus on women” (ELI-FaNS) has been approved by Misereor/KZE (Catholic Central Agency for Development Aid), Germany. Starting in January 2023, it involves five Prolinnova Country Platforms (CPs) – in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa (Limpopo Province) – plus support to the Prolinnova subregional platforms in West & Central Africa and in Eastern & Southern Africa. The CP in Benin, the youngest to join the Prolinnova Community of Practice, will be mentored by people in the other CPs as well as in the International Support Team. This international project is coordinated by the NGO ACDEP (Association of Church-based Development Projects) based in Tamale, northern Ghana.
ELI-FaNS is a follow-on project to SULCI-FaNS (Scaling Up Local Capacity to Innovate in Food and Nutrition Security). It seeks to improve the nutrition, health and livelihoods of rural communities by mainstreaming participatory farmer-led approaches into organisations mandated to support farmers, thus allowing the communities to adapt to challenges they face by means of co-development of technical, social and institutional innovations. The main outcomes sought are:
- Small-scale farmers (especially women and youth) actively innovate to improve food and nutrition security and livelihoods of rural communities;
- Researchers, university lecturers and other relevant decision makers at local, national, subregional and regional level pay more attention to PID approaches and engage in activities to promote PID;
- Prolinnova structures at all levels are functional and convincingly promote farmer-led joint innovation at local, national and subregional/ regional level.
An inception workshop will be held in Accra, Ghana, in February 2023.
