On 21 May, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) convened a sharefair to share lessons, identify promising solutions and ultimately improve the impact of investments in water in the Ethiopia country program.
Participants arrived at the following conclusions:
- Partnerships:
- Projects should ensure better integration between research institutions/researchers, tertiary institutions, and development practitioners
- Projects can give voice to end-users; through activities and exposing their audiences at the regional and global level to the end-users
- Scaling up and out:
- Engage the right actors from the beginning so scaling is part of the full process
- Trust and effective communications between stakeholders and partners helps ensure research is used beyond the project cycle
- Challenges:
- Limited local institutional and university capacity
- Technical challenges in up-scaling; in some cases, the smallholdings are too small
- Innovations:
- Combining traditional, new technologies; integrating new into existing systems
- Engaging young professional workers into networks/projects
The NBDC team also helped organise this special event.
Read the final report of the Water Grants Share Fair as well as other materials presented
