Africa RISING management team visits project sites in east and southern Africa

The leadership team of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)-led Africa RISING project in east and southern Africa recently concluded monitoring visits to project sites in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. The team assessed the status and progress of implementation of various project activities by partners. These visits took place between 15–22 February 2017 in Malawi and Zambia, and 21–31 March 2017 in Tanzania.

Africa RISING management team delegation in Zambia during a visit to Good Nature Seed Ltd., which is multiplying breeder seed as part of the project’s activities aimed at improving the legume seed delivery systems in Zambia (photo credit: Jonathan Odhong’/ IITA).

The monitoring team was lead by the manager Africa RISING West Africa and East/Southern Africa projects, Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon, the Africa RISING ESA chief scientist, Mateete Bekunda, and in the Zambia leg of the visits, by Harry Ngoma, food security specialist with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Zambia Mission.

‘Overall, the work being implemented by our partners in all the these countries is impressive, said Hoeschle-Zeledon. ‘But we identified some issues that partners still need to address to ensure that we stay on course to achieve the research-in-development targets that we have committed to with our donor, USAID, and other stakeholders’.

The monitoring visit was the first made by the management team since Phase II of the program launched in October 2016.

‘This visit gave the project management team a chance to go one step beyond receiving reports from partners. It allowed us to verify the actual status of activity implementation on the ground,’ said Bekunda. He said the management team and partners discussed emerging operational challenges and opportunities and they reviewed how project activities are aligned with the overall Africa RISING vision of success.

While speaking at the end of the monitoring visit in Zambia, Ngoma lauded the project partners, encouraging them to ‘keep their foot on the gas’ in implementing project activities. He said USAID was still in the process of revising its Global Food Security strategy. He also pointed out opportunities for filling some research gaps on some of the scaling activities being implemented.

Find out more about the visits by clicking on the images and links below:

How Africa RISING technologies are improving farmers’ lives in Zambia – https://spark.adobe.com/page/EvmJ5a9xsWphe/

How Africa RISING technologies are improving farmers’ lives in Malawi – https://spark.adobe.com/page/9bEuavVs6Q5z6/