The 2008 Prolinnova International Partners Workshop (IPW), held in Tamale, Ghana, brought together 33 advocates of participatory innovation development (PID) from 22 countries including farmers, NGOs, and staff of government ministries and 
extension agencies, research organizations and universities.
The participants discussed experiences in the various countries with PID, formulated lessons learnt and mapped out strategies to strengthen this important component in the Prolinnova programme.
The Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture presented the keynote address during the opening session, confirming his support for PID. He later joined other guests and invitees including the Regional Minister for Northern Ghana in visiting the information market showing the work done by the various Prolinnova country platforms.
The IPW provided ample opportunity to review and discuss recent development and challenges within Prolinnova. Participants looked at the relevance of PID for climate-change adaptation, reviewed the attention to gender concerns in their activities, re-strategised efforts to integrate PID into curricula for centres of higher learning and discussed ways to improve existing M&E efforts. In a separate session, the findings of the first phase of the FAIR Action Research on Local Innovation Support Funds (LISFs) were presented as formulated during a 3-day writeshop with partners involved just prior to the main IPW event.
All decisions taken during the IPW were summarised in the 2008 Prolinnova Action Plan. In the final evaluation participants stressed that the meeting, in spite of a few logistical hiccups, has been a great event for learning and joined planning and thus a source of inspiration for the year to come. Nepal has been kind enough to offer to host the 2009 IPW.
