Program 4 – Communications and Knowledge Management

Ensuring the awareness and adoption of useful innovations through developing innovative ways to access information and knowledge, deliver high-quality technical advice and services to smallholder farmers, and support evidence-based decision-making.

Participants at the AIFSC/ILRI nutrition workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo credit B Anderson-Smith, AIFSC

Outcomes:

Program 4 aims to improve access to knowledge by smallholder female and male farmers and livestock keepers, through:

  • innovations in information and knowledge-delivery systems operational in target countries for distributing new knowledge on food and agriculture, including information on potentially useful innovations
  • adoption of evidence-based policies as best practice, through widely distributing policy briefs from research results within target countries to policy makers and politicians.

Activities in this program:

A research project identified priorities for science and policy under rapid global change by analysing farming systems and food security in Africa. This activity built on previous work that updated continental spatial datasets of key drivers for farming systems and food security maps, to strengthen its dissemination. It produced a web-based platform, published book, and policy briefs to improve awareness of farming systems’ analytical results and datasets to help with prioritisation and decision making. It has built awareness and capacity for developing evidence-based policy at the regional and national level with policy and decision makers. Read more about this project.

A related project used modelling to test potential scenarios relating to future agricultural investment areas for Africa. This incorporated future supply, demand and trade scenarios, and likely constraints and impacts of specific interventions. Read more about this project.