The Prolinnova Oversight Group (POG) has recently named two new “Friends of Prolinnova” – although they are both actually “old” friends who have been engaged in the network for many years and hopefully will be for many more years to come:
Suman Shekhar Manandhar is Chief Technical Advisor with NAF Seeds Private Limited and is also a part-time freelance consultant. He has long been a committed member of the Prolinnova network. He coordinated Prolinnova–Nepal for several years as staff member of the first host NGO Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research and Development (LI-BIRD). He led the FAIR (Farmer Access to Innovation Resources) and LINEX-CCA (Local Innovation & Experimentation for Climate Change Adaptation) projects and was key organiser of the Farmer Innovation Fair (FIF) in Nepal in 2009, held back-to-back with the Innovation Asia Pacific Symposium, the Prolinnova International Partners Workshop, a POG meeting and a FAIR partners meeting. He served in the POG as the representative from Asia from 2013 to 2015 and again as an independent POG member from 2020 to 2024, also as POG co-chair. He has supported the network as PID trainer on a pro-bono basis and advised other CPs on organising FIFs. He actively supports the CP in Nepal.
Violet Kirigua is a Senior Research Officer in the Crops Systems Unit of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) with responsibilities in research planning and management, acquisition, organisational marketing and monitoring and evaluation. She has been involved in designing and implementing numerous research and development projects and facilitated strategic planning processes for many national and regional organisations. She is currently coordinating a subcomponent of the National Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (NAVCDP). Violet has been a member of Prolinnova–Kenya since it started in 2007. She represents KALRO in the Prolinnova–Kenya National Steering Committee and represents Kenya in the Prolinnova taskforce for ESA. She served in the POG as representative from Eastern & Southern Africa from 2021 to 2024. During that time and also since then, she has played a major role in organising webinars and reports on experiences of Prolinnova in institutionalising the PID approach, leading the working group that focuses on integrating PID into institutions of research and higher education.
See also the other Friends of Prolinnova here: https://prolinnova.net/friends-prolinnova/
