Africa RISING project in Ethiopia
and participatory agricultural
research
Peter Thorne
Expert meeting on participatory agricultural research: Approaches, design
and evaluation, Oxford, 9-13 December 2013

Introduction
•
Africa RISING = Africa Research In Sustainable Intensification for
the Next Generation
•
Three research-for-development projects supported by the United
States Agency for International Development(USAID) as part of
the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative
(www.feedthefuture.gov).
•
Create opportunities for smallholder farm households to move
out of hunger and poverty through sustainably intensified farming
systems that improve food, nutrition, and income
security, particularly for women and children, and conserve or
enhance the natural resource base.

Projects
 Three project are located in
 the Ethiopian highlands,
 West Africa
 East and Southern Africa
 Managed by ILRI and IITA
 Monitoring and Evaluation, IFPRI

Ethiopian Highlands
 Africa RISING in Ethiopian highlands:
improve food security and farm income
diversification through sustainable
intensification of crop-livestock
systems
 Integrated approach: strong
participatory base to identify
technologies and management
practices that could work for farmers
whilst accounting for the wider
contexts in which these must operate
(e.g. market access, effectiveness of
institutions, policy environment).

Research components
 Research Component
one :
 Characterisation and
stratification of households
within engaged communities.
 A basis for identifying and
propagating improved
technologies and
management strategies

 Research Component
Two:
 Inter-disciplinary action
research at household and
community scales
 Including support for peerto-peer knowledge
exchange within
communities
 strengthening and
augmenting existing
practices

 Research Component Three:
 Participatory market opportunity
identification, and value chain
analyses
 Engagement via multi-stakeholder
platforms

Participatory approaches
 Participatory community analysis
 Sustainable Livelihoods Asset Evaluation
(SLATE)
 Indigenous knowledge acquisition and
formalisation (AKT5)
 Value chain analysis

What’s in this for me?
 Numerous approaches. Which horse for
which course?
 Numerous approaches. Can / how do
they complement each other (including
scale issues)?
 Years of doing this stuff. What have we
learned?
 Piles of participation: but what are the
generic lessons?

More
 http://www.africa-rising.net
 http://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/16498
 http://africa-rising. wikispaces.com/Calendar
 http://goo.gl/2m56L
 http://africa-rising. wikispaces.com/
 http://www.slideshare.net/ africa-rising
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/africa-rising

Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation
africa-rising.net