Kick-off meeting Climate Smart Agriculture East Africa project

The Climate Smart Agriculture - East AFrica (CSA-EA) project held its internal kick-off meeting to create a clear and common understanding on the project goals and outcomes amongst project partners.

Over 40 project staff from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Netherlands, Tanzania and Uganda came together at Lake Victoria Hotel Entebbe for this meeting. The meeting aimed create a clear and common understanding on the goals and projected outcomes; the specific expertise each partner will contribute, and agree on modalities for internal collaboration as well as a number of strategic approaches for implementation given the diversity of the partners involved in the project.

The participants also developed a draft work plan for the next eight months of project's inception phase.  Key activities agreed upon are:

• Development of a set of tools for inclusive business and climate smart value chain analysis;

• Selection of priority value chains and business cases and a subsequent detailed asessment of climate risks for the selected value chains that can be addressed through the CSA-EA project;

• Development of concrete climate smart inclusive business cases in the selected value chains that will climate proof agricultural value chains and support sustainable food production at smallholder farmer level;

• Development of a monitoring, evaluation and learning plan to guide project implementation and learning for adaptation, which is part of a larger overarching knowledge sharing and learning strategy that will be developed;

• Design of the project innovation and matching grant facility which is set aside for strategic interventions that will allow the project to mobilise co-investments from the private sector (such as cooperatives, SME’s, agro-industry and service providers) to promote climate smart related innovations throughout all segments of the targeted value chains;

• Development of a project communications strategy for internal and external communication purposes.

About the project

The Climate Smart Agriculture East Africa project, is an initiative funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs that will contribute to affordable and sustainably produced food for the growing population in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The five year project is implemented by a consortium of Wageningen University and Research, CGIAR’s Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security Programme (CCAFS), Agriterra,  Rabo Partnerships and led by SNV.

The consortium provides a strong platform to not only manage and coordinate a robust climate smart agriculture project, but will also provide targeted technical assistance, business facilitation, and research and knowledge management support to local partners and companies in the three targeted East African countries.