Between 14th and 27th November, ACAI held two meetings with development partners in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Ibadan, Nigeria to review the collaboration between the project and the partners, and to agree on short and long-term plans for the upcoming ACAI activities.
The meetings come ahead of the annual review meeting slated for the second week of December in Mwanza, Tanzania. The discussion between ACAI’s core team and the partners focused on the role that the development partners have to play especially as the project enters its third year of implementation that is earmarked for validation and dissemination of ACAI’s decision support tools.
The ACAI project demand driven model is based on the needs identified by development partners as priorities in the cassava value chain. In this respect, ACAI’s partners in Nigeria and Tanzania are drawn from fertilizer manufacturing, cassava processing and marketing, as well as organizations that provide solutions to cassava growers.
In Nigeria, ACAI is working with Notore, SG2000, OYSCGA, 2SCALE and PSALTRY. In Tanzania, the development partners are Minjingu, MEDA, CAVA-II, FCI and FJS. ACAI Use Cases are specific to the needs of each development partner as identified at the onset of the project.
From the discussions, partners will work together in synergy in their respective countries, and complement each other with their specific specializations. The discussions also cantered on the upcoming annual meeting in Mwanza, where the partners are expected to present their feedback on the development of the decision support tools in respect to their organizations and commercial objectives.
The meeting in Tanzania was led by ACAI Senior Systems Agronomist, Dr Pieter Pypers. In Nigeria, the meeting was led by ACAI’s Head of Partnership Liaison, Dr Veronica Ne Uzokwe, and Nigeria’s Country Coordinator, Dr Christine Kreye.
During the Mwanza meeting, the development partners will evaluate ACAI’s site specific fertilizer recommendation, decision support tool, as well as make joint presentations per country.
Development partners are critical links between the project decision support tools and innovations, and the end users as the last mile service provider based on their grassroot dissemination networks and understanding of their end user needs.
The Mwanza meeting is to provide the platform for both parties to discuss sustainability of the tools developed by the project, identify specific gaps, and review the project’s critical path in respect to the original objectives.