AfricaRice 'Science Week' on Effective Collaboration for Large-Scale Development Impact

The Africa Rice Center in Cotonou, Benin is holding ‘Science Week"  from 24 to 27 February. The conference brings together 250 international and national rice research and development partners from the public and private sectors and national research and extension programs of 28 African countries. The Center is reviewing the Strategic Plan known as the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), a Rice Task Force mechanism and a network of Rice Sector Development Hubs set up across Africa to concentrate R&D efforts and connect partners along the rice value chain.

The main objectives of the AfricaRice Science Week & GRiSP-Africa Forum are:

• Carry out effective and efficient planning of research-for-development (R4D) activities in 2014 with partners
• Facilitate the building up of ‘a Rice Sector Development Hub Innovation team' in each of the 24 countries where the Rice Hubs have been set up
• Determine ‘desirable outcomes' for each Hub over the next 5 years and identify the first set of indicators to gauge progress towards these outcomes
• Develop a work plan to achieve the outcomes in each Hub through dissemination of ‘scalable products' by working with development partners from public and private sectors
• Plan collaborative research activities in the various Africa-wide Rice Task Forces and identify opportunities for synergies between the Task Forces
• Familiarize the participants with the AfricaRice monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool and the Rice eHub

For details of the news, see http://africarice.blogspot.com/2014/02/africarice-science-week-to-focus-on.html