The document proposes the development of an online platform called AgKnowledge to map and align African agricultural research needs and investments. The platform would allow users to: 1) Compare documented national agricultural research priorities and needs to research investments and projects. 2) Identify gaps and coordination opportunities between research demands and supplies. 3) Provide services to help target and coordinate research donations, projects, and partnerships. The document outlines initial plans and principles for developing a prototype of the platform focusing on selected agricultural systems in Africa.

1. CAADP-CGIAR AgKnowledge:
An agricultural development investment
knowledge platform for Africa
Preliminary Report on a Prototype Study,
Dublin Steering Committee Meeting
IFPRI, Washington DC
12th July, 2012

2. AgKnowledge Team
(so far…)
Luz Marina Alvare, Nienke Beintema, Maria Comanescu, Zhe Guo, Joseph Karugia
(ReSAKSS/ECA), Zahia Khan, Soonho Kim, Maction Komwa (GMU), Jawoo Koo,
Stella Massawe (ReSAKSS/ECA), Nilam Prasan, Michael Rahija, Todd Slind
(SpatialDev), Ria Tenorio, Indira Yerramareddy, Stanley Wood
with inputs and collaboration from
Godfrey Bahigwa (IGAD), Sam Benin, Polly Eriksen (ILRI), Adam Kennedy, Athur
Mabiso, Valerie Rhoe (CRP4), Pascale Sabbagh (CRP2 and Yield Gap Database),
Heather Wylie

3. Driving Questions
• What are national priorities for ag. technology and
innovation investments for country X?
• What is the aggregate pattern of national R&D
demand across Africa?
• What is the pattern of CGIAR investments (and SROs and
NAROs) in Africa? (supply)
• How well do National and CGIAR investment plans
align? Can we identify R&D areas that are over- or
under-represented relative to national needs?
• Is there a rationale for non-alignment? What is an
optimal degree of alignment? (e.g. different time frames)

4. Driving Questions
• Can we provide on-line “alignment” services for
– Donors or R&D providers to scan innovation demands in order to better target
or market their R&D investments, products and services, and identify critical
investment gaps
– National development planners to find relevant R&D programs, projects and
institutions (within and) beyond their borders
• What opportunities exist to improve coordination
among development actors?
e.g., national planning and implementation agencies, R&D and extension
institutions, and donors?
• How can technology/innovation/knowledge
providers beyond Africa engage? (e.g. ACIAR, with
Australian know-how, private sector)

5. Driving Questions
• What supplementary data/information/knowledge
can be brought to bear in order to;
– Better characterize investment opportunities
– Validate the relevance/impact potential of planned
investments
– Improve the identification of coordination opportunities
– Inform the more detailed design of specific
implementation programs
– Identify a range of services and service providers who can
contribute to effective coordination, delivery,
implementation, and on-going support of investments

6. Dublin Road Map: Activity 2
 Mapping and Aligning African Agriculture
Research Needs and Investments
 Concept note to be finalized by Feb 18 for SC approval by
end February (coordinated by IFPRI)
 Formation of Working Group to plan prototyping activity
 Agree Africa-wide Agroecosystem/FS framework, and
select priority system(s) for a prototype study
 Compare documented research needs in selected
system(s) to documented research investments of
relevance to those systems (“Mapping” of research
demands to supply)
 “Mapping” pilot study review meeting (May 2012)
 Alignment Meeting with donor community, African country
and regional partners, and research community (TBD)
May 2012: USAID Funded “Horn of Africa” Prototype ($90K) - IFPRI HarvestChoic
* Slide taken from Dublin Steering Committee Meeting, Accra, Feb 2012

7. Stocktaking and Mapping Exercise (from proposal)
1 Technical Working Group 9 Coordination & Investment Options
CAADP:
CAADP:
5 National
CAADP:
TECHNOLOGY/INNOVATION
Investment
National
Investment 6 REQUIREMENTS*
Investment
Plans (NIPs) Tech.
Plans (IPs, Countries/Sub-Regions/
Plans (NIPs)
Reviews), Sector Value Chains/Themes
Plans, etc 8
Adopt
2 Agroecosystem/
Spatial Framework
R&D
Regional 8
R&D
Adopt Consistent ACTIVITIES* Spatially-Explicit Gaps?
Technology/ Agroecosystems/
4 Innovation/ R&D Sub-regions/ Framework
Descriptors Valus chains/
Themes
CAADP:
7 Research
CAADP:
National
National
Investment 7 3
Investments
Investment
Plans (NIPs)
CGIAR (CRPs),
Plans (NIPs)
Characterization and Diagnosis
SROs, NARS According to sub-region, agroecosystem, and country dimensions, e.g., demographic,
agricultural potential, productivity, market access, poverty, natural resource use patterns
and trends (HarvestChoice, CSI), national agriculture sector and donor investments
(ReSAKSS and various project mapping tools), and R&D capacities (ASTI)

8. Principles & Learning
• Not a single-shot assessment, but a live, accessible
platform that can be kept current and expanded to meet
evolving/different needs
• Minimize development of new components, focus on
integration and interoperability of existing databases and
analytical functionality
• Location-agnostic platform that can be taken on by
appointed institution(s) (e.g. federated implementation)
• Growing realization of the high relevance but vast scope of
assembling, organizing and synthesizing relevant
supporting knowledge.
• Greatest challenges in finding and organizing knowledge
around the relevant innovation opportunities we already
have (e.g. the anecdotal “on-the-shelf” technologies)

9. Harmonized Ag. Dev. Investment Database Structure
CAADP | CGIAR Country | CRP Source Reference, Time Period, Currency Units
ID1: Name, #, Description ID Level#: Investment Cost
ID2: Name, #, Description ID Level#: Outputs, Outcomes, Impacts, Targets
Standard ID Level#: Partners
tags, & ID3: Name, #, Description
Themes Pillars | SLOs
Activity: #, Description Region/Country
AEZ/Production System
Dictionaries
Commodity/Value Chain
Terms to be harmonized (FAO, CABI)
CRP Documents:
CAADP Documents:
1.1 Drylands
Ethiopia (PIF), Review, CPP
2 Policies, Institutions, Markets
Kenya (MTIP)*, Review, CPP
3.1 Wheat
Uganda (ASDS), Review, CPP
3.2 Maize
IGAD (Godfrey)
3.6 Dryland Cereals
Tanzania (G8)
3.7 Livestock and Fish
Ghana (G8)
4 Nutrition and Health
5 Water, Land & Ecosystems
7/CCAFS Climate Change

10. CAADP-CGIAR Activity Prototype Database

11. Indexing
Standard FAO-AGROVOC (IFPRI/KM)
THEMES keywords
IFPRI CAADP
Analysis
CAADP Results FS x Country:
Docs CAADP-CGIAR: AgKnowledge SPAM, Livestock, People
Yield Gaps, VoP,
Productivity?
Entry/Edit
CRP
Docs
Program DB MATCH/ALIGN FS x Additional
Other, CAADP-CGIAR Query/ Country Spatial Layers
eg, CPP Filter/Browse Tables (SSA & HoA)
Tabulate
caadp.bounceme.net
Project
Category ->
THEME ETL, VI Processing
Project DB
ReSAKSS/ & Tools
ECA (PMT)
Project DB WB, UN, CG, MAPPR
AfDB etc, Select & Display HarvestChoice
Projects Layers as Context CELL5M
MAPPR
Tabulate by FS &
HarvestChoice servers
Admin Domains?
Spatialdev/HC servers Technology & Species Suitability Maps &
Tables (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda)
Knowledge
(Suitability/ Menus with
Productivity) Table & Map Productivity Assessment Projections (crop &
(pngs for demo) technology specific) (SSA)

12. Matching/Aligning Taxonomy
• Matching set: Which set of CAADP plans and
CRPs are to be “matched”?
• Matching dimensions: What specific themes,
agroecosystems, countries/regions, commodities
and partners to be matched?
• Matching attributes: Number of activities,
investment amounts, priorities (shares of
activities, share of costs), partners
• Use of Agroecosystems as a core dimension of
coordination and investment alignment
• Need for harmonized vocabulary and tags

13. Harmonizing by Agroecosystems
CAADP: Kenya
CRP 1.1 Drylands

16. Issues
• The technical design aspects of the CAADP-CGIAR alignment databases are
now fairly complete and stable, and can be extended from programs to
projects
• Major effort, but well established process, to add tags/keywords, synonyms,
hierarchies as well as standardized themes (AGROVOC & ontologies) in order
to significantly improve the retrieval, matching and summarizing efficiency
and potency
• Initially standardized on Farming Systems as the harmonized expression of
Agroecosystems (AES)
• Very significant differences among the various CAADP and CRP documents in
the specificity/granularity of investment information, on the terminologies/
vocabularies used, and on the articulation of target commodities,
geographies and partners (but these issues can be reduced going forward by
providing programme/project description templates and standardized
themes/tags/AES support)

17. Issues
• Remaining major issues;
– Backlog of investment data to be entered, cleaned and tagged
– Construct/elicit improved information about targeting (e.g. AES,
value chains), costing, outputs and impacts
– Assemble, codify, and ingest “knowledge” related data sources
(inclduing generation of syntheses/findings as a knowledge type)
– Harmonize “back-end” databases, coding and logic, for more
efficient and seamless integration from the user perspective
• Requires a wide-range of specialist skills; programming,
indexing, ontology, web design, infrastructure, GIS, content
management, thematic analytical capacity. Major investment
– but potentially very high rewards (e.g. potential linkage to
actors, service providers), reduced transactions costs, basis
for dialogues on coordination, spillovers, and improved
investment efficiency.

18. What we plan to deliver in September?
• A functioning integrated web platform loaded with CAADP data for 5
countries (Eth, Ken, Uga, Tan, Gha) and 9 CRPs. With full indexing and
standarized theming.
• Integrated query and reporting options for, e.g.,
– Tabulation of thematic, commodity, and AES investments across countries by
CAADP pillar (CAADP)
– Tabulation of thematic, commodity, country and AES investments in R&D
across countries and regions
– Matching of CAADP and R&D investments by AES, theme, commodity,
regions/countries and partners.
• A set of tabulated, mapped CAADP-CGIAR investment matrices (by
country, theme, AES, commodity and, if possible, by partners)
• At least three HoA examples of linkages between investment matrices
and extended knowledge/evidence bases (e.g. current and potential
productivity levels, agricultural growth and poverty reduction potential of
proposed investments), with associated interpretations of alignment
between investment priorities and available knowledge/evidence

19. What we plan to deliver in September?
• Draft awareness materials on AgKnowledge scope and purpose to be
finalized for GCARD
• Documentation of the accomplishments of the case study and challenges
and opportunities in “full” SSA implementation
• Proposal for specific features/examples that could be completed/available
for October GCARD meeting
• Implementation plan for extension across countries and for national R&D
entities. Budget under different implementation scenarios

20. AgKnowledge

21. CAADP AgKnowledge
Innovation Needs Innovation Pipeline Match/Align Knowledge Services
All All Search by…. Evaluation Products Actors
CAADP Plans CGIAR CRPs Country Case studies Analysis/Tabulation
CAADP Technical Reviews SROs CAADP Pillar Findings Technology maps
Country Program Plans NARS/NAROS Theme(sub-theme) Literature/Biblio Commodity maps
National Sector Strategies Private Sector Value Chain Investment maps
AEZ/Farming system
Constraint
HC Spatial
PMT
Yield Gap
DB
Knowledge
Database/ Suitability
CAADP/CRP Mapping
Bibliography
Database
HC Yield
Models
ASTI disag.
Project
Donor Mapping
Investments DB/Tools

22. Contacts:
First Name
Last Name
E-mail Address
Website
Project: Direct Telephone
Project Title Mobile Telephone
Project Nickname Address
Organization City
Approach (type of investment) State
Project Phase Postal Code
Full Time Equivalents (# project Staff) Action: Country
Duration in months Action Type
Start date Investment
End date Tags (user defined)
Grant Amount Status
Project Budget Start Date
People Affected End Date
Description Description
Impact (what projected outcomes will achieve) Multimedia content (photos, slideshows, videos, etc.)
Project Partners Action Partners
Project Contacts Action Contacts
Action Locations (points, multi-points, polygons, districts)

23. http://prototypetestsite.com

25. Spatial Distribution of Agricultural
Interventions in the COMESA region
Internal Presentation
May 28th, 2011
Source: Joseph Karugia and Stella Massawe (ReSAKSS/ECA)

26. ReSAKSS’ investment database
• Approximately 450 national and regional interventions (2005
reference year)
• Not an exhaustive but a detailed list of agricultural interventions
taking place in the region
• Captures projects, programmes focus on pillars CAADP Pillars 1-3
for now
• Research interventions (Pillar 4) not main focus
– not to repeat what is done by the CGIAR, ASARECA, ASTI, who
will provide links to these
• Documentation of private sector initiatives (recent addition &
ongoing)