Summary
report on PROLINNOVA-Uganda
January–June 2003
In
Uganda, PROLINNOVA builds on previous work related to promoting
local innovation under the two projects “Indigenous Soil and Water
Conservation in Africa” (ISWC) and “Promoting Farmer Innovation”
(PFI), both coordinated by the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture,
Animal Industries and Fisheries. This Ministry has joined the core
facilitating team for PROLINNOVA planning in the country, which
is coordinated by the NGO Environmental Alert, and includes three
other NGOs as members: PELUM (Participatory Ecological Land Use
Management) Uganda, Kulika Charitable Trust, and the Africa 2000
Network.
From
March to May 2003, members of the core team made inventories of
organisations and projects that have relevant experiences and/or
were potentially interested in the aims and vision of PROLINNOVA
in Uganda. They held bilateral meetings or interviews with key organisations,
according to formats agreed beforehand by the core team. The main
objectives of this exercise were to explore the relevance of a PROLINNOVA
initiative in Uganda and to identify important areas of attention
and priorities for a future programme in the country. The synthesis
report of this inventory is under preparation but preliminary conclusions
have been formulated as follows:
- There
is support from almost all organisations for a PROLINNOVA initiative
and an interest to participate as a way of scaling up, disseminating
and sharing their related work and receiving assistance in documenting
and validating their work.
- There
is a need to clarify further the concept of farmer innovation,
the role it can play in agricultural development and NRM, the
interaction with formal research and if local innovations require
scientific validation.
- There
is a need to create linkage between PROLINNOVA and national policy
frameworks and national institutions, among others, those that
would help to protect the intellectual property rights of the
innovators.
A national
workshop will be held in the third week of August with representatives
of all stakeholder groups, including farmers, to assess the results
of the inventory, to make a joint review of in-country experiences
and to develop further the agenda for PROLINNOVA in Uganda.
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