Innovation Platforms in the Aquaculture Value
Chain in Egypt
Malcolm Dickson and Remco Mur
National Aquaculture Innovation Platform Workshop,
Cairo, 19-20 February 2014

CGIAR Livestock and Fish Research Program
The program
• A collaboration between CGIAR centers (CIAT, ICARDA,
WorldFish, ILRI),
• Within selected value chains across Africa, South and Southeast
Asia and Latin America
• To foster the growth and inclusivity of livestock value chains
around the world and to achieve, at scale, more meat, milk and
fish, by and for the poor.
See: http://livestockfish.cgiar.org/ and see http://www.ilri.org/home

CGIAR Livestock and Fish Research Program
Why Livestock and Fish?
• Animal-source foods provide critical inputs to the health of women and
children
• Nearly 1 billion (70%) of the world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people
depend on livestock;
• two-thirds of the world’s livestock keepers are rural women
• 400 million people in Africa and South Asia depend on fish for most of
their animal protein
• 156 million landless people keep livestock

CGIAR Livestock and Fish Research Program
Expected outcomes
• Aquaculture: increase fish consumption by 20% in target value chains
• Goats and sheep: increase productivity to double incomes in target
value chains
• Dairy and pigs: double productivity and incomes in target value chains

Sustainable Development Goals - Linkages
 01 End poverty
 02 Empower girls and women and achieve gender equity
03 Provide quality education and lifelong learning
04 Ensure healthy lives
 05 Ensure food security and good nutrition
06 Achieve universal access to water and sanitation
07 Secure sustainable energy
 08 Create jobs, sustainable livelihoods and equitable growth
 09 Manage natural resource assets sustainably
10 Ensure good governance and effective institutions
11 Ensure stable and peaceful societies
COLLABORATE a global enabling environment & catalyze long term finance
12 Create

The IEIDEAS project
Improving Employment and Income
through Development of Egypt’s
Aquaculture Sector

The aquaculture value chain in Egypt
• Provides significant benefits for the Egyptian people;
• Economic activity ($ 1.5 billion)
• Employment (100,000+ FTE)
• Food security (one fish per person per week)
• Relatively simple value chain
Producers
Transporters
&
wholesalers
Retailers
~ 6,000 fish farms
~ 800 wholesalers
~ 5,000 female
retailers, ?? male
Medium scale
businesses
Medium scale
businesses
Small-scale
businesses
High feed costs,
declining profits
Low margins but
high volumes
Low margins, high
risk

Aquaculture production and markets
Production
focused in
aqua zones
Markets widely
dispersed but
within Egypt

Characteristics of the aquaculture value chain in
Egypt
• Other stakeholders; feed mills, equipment suppliers,
hatcheries, ice suppliers, restaurants, fish fry shops
• Hardly any processing or exports of farmed fish
• Continued expansion possible if profitability maintained
• Opportunities for sustainable and equitable growth,
including for women
• Sector has developed despite poor support and negative
policies
• Environmental issues need to be considered

Innovation Platforms

Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS)
• a network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals
• Focus on ‘innovation’ in a sector rather than on “production”
• Innovation is a combination of ‘hardware’, ‘software’ and
‘orgware’
• Actor oriented
• Breaks with the idea that research is the major source of
knowledge
• Knowledge is generated (from different sources) and learning
takes place through stakeholder interaction
• Complementing roles of multiple actors and the importance
of linkages among them
• The demand side must be included in the innovation process
• Policies are important to innovation

Innovation Platforms (IP)
• A way to make AIS thinking more concrete and
actionable
• Groups of stakeholders who come together to discuss
and address challenges and opportunities
• Members represent organizations or groups that have
different but often complementary objectives and
interests
• Working with different stakeholders may lead to new
fields of enquiry

Innovation platforms and value chains

This workshop

Innovation platforms in the
aquaculture value chain in Egypt
Objectives
To contribute to aquaculture value chain development by:
• Facilitating a process of engagement to develop clear
ideas to stimulate growth of the Egyptian aquaculture
sector
• Identifying challenges in the national and local
institutional policy environment pertaining the
aquaculture value chain and a way forward
• Provide input to an agenda for the development of the
aquaculture sector

National Innovation Platform workshop
Objectives
• To develop clear ideas to stimulate growth of the
Egyptian aquaculture sector by identifying, exploring
and addressing value chain challenges
• Start up working groups working on specific prioritised
issues related to the Aquaculture Value Chain
• Identifying capacity needs related to innovation
platforms’ performance

National Innovation Platform workshop
Outputs
• key challenges and opportunities identified, prioritised
and explored
• different working groups established
• an initial assessment of the capacity needs related to
innovation platforms

Workshop Programme – Wednesday 19 February
09:30
Opening and introduction of participants
10:00
Context of the workshop
10:15
Presentation on Innovation Platforms and how they work
10:30
Presentation of Governorate-level issues from the preparatory meetings
11:00
Coffee break
11:15
Categorizing issues and linking them to impact pathways
11:45
Prioritizing issues and deciding on working group process
12:15
Analysis of the issues, identify causes and effects and stakeholders who
need to be part of the solution – Round 1
13:00
Lunch break
14:00
Round 1 cont’d
14:30
Analysis of the issues – Round 2
15:30
Coffee break
15:45
Round 2 cont’d
16:16
Reporting back from working groups
17:15
Closure
19:30
Dinner on the Nile

Workshop Programme – Thursday 20 February
08:30
Opening and recap of day 1
08:45
Stakeholder group work to identify what each can do to address the
issues
10:00
Developing initial action plans
10:45
Coffee break
11:00
Action plans cont’d
11:30
Reporting back action plans
12:00
Establishing working groups for future work and organising the process
12:45
Evaluation of the workshop
13:00
Lunch break
14:00
Summary presentation of workshop to high-level stakeholders and
discussion
15:00
Closing remarks
16:00
Closure

Market place (30 min)
Issues defined at Governorate level
• Presenting the posters from the Governorate-level meetings
• At each poster: at least one representative from the
respective Governorate
• Other participants are asked to start at any poster (not their
own)
• Governorate representatives clarify issues on the posters
• Participants circulate the room until they have viewed all
posters

Prioritizing issues
Process:
• Each participant is provided with 2 stickers
• Stick your stickers on the two issues you find most
important (you can also stick both stickers on one issue)
• The number of stickers (votes) will be counted for each issue
Keep in mind the following criteria:
• Relevant to more than one governorate
• Urgent
• Severe
• Impacts the sector as a whole

World Café: Analysis of the issues
• From the list of prioritized issues the top 10 will be
addressed
• Two rounds will each address 5 issues
• Participants select an issue and table to attend
• Exploring the issue:
 Clarify the issue (opportunity / challenge)
 What are the possible causes and effects?
 How severe / urgent is it?
 Who is/are affected?
 Who has to be part of the solution?
• Document answers on flipcharts / cards on the tables
• First round: 30 minutes
• After 30 minutes: opportunity to change groups
• Following rounds are 15-20 minutes each

Stakeholder group work
• Participants are regrouped into stakeholder sub-groups
• Answer the following question:
What can you do about the issue / how can you
contribute to a solutions?
How feasible are your suggestions (time-wise, budgetwise,…)?
• Write your feasible “strategies” on cards and stick them
to the issues
• In what issue / working group do you need to be a
represented?
• Indicate where they need representation by sticking the
name of the group at the poster

Establishing working groups
• Working groups are established to work on these
issues in the coming months / years
• People are asked to create Working Groups by
committing themselves to one (or more) of the
themes by writing their names on the flipchart
• Please only commit to a working group if you are
able and willing to do the work
• Stakeholder groups can discuss who should
represent the stakeholder in what Working Group

Developing initial action plans
• according to identified working groups
• identify potential strategies to address the issue by
answering the following questions:
o What are effective strategies to address the issue?
(based on the cards of the actor groups)
o Who should be involved?
o What is feasible?
• After 45 minutes, participants are asked to develop an
action plan based on a provided format

Organising the process
• Formalising the IP (leadership)
• Facilitation of Working Groups
• Coordination
• Documentation
• Feedback
• Reflection mechanisms for the working groups

Evaluation of the workshop
• Each participant takes two cards
• On one card write one thing you liked about the
workshop
• On the other card write something that did not go so
well during the workshop

CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish
livestockfish.cgiar.org
CGIAR is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for a food secure future. The CGIAR
Research Program on Livestock and Fish aims to increase the productivity of small-scale livestock and fish systems
in sustainable ways, making meat, milk and fish more available and affordable across the developing world.