Prolinnova Oversight Group

The Prolinnova Oversight Group (POG) serves as governance mechanism to ensure accountability of the Global Partnership Platform (GPP) to the Country Platforms (CPs), their constituencies and donors. The POG is made up of four people from the CPs, one from the International Support Team (IST) and three external people. Since its inaugural meeting in 2005 in South Africa, it has met face-to-face at least once, normally twice, each year; otherwise, it communicates by email. It has drawn up several policies and guidelines  for the GPP. The Terms of Reference for the POG were originally drawn up by Prolinnova partners at their first meeting in Yirgalem, Ethiopia in March 2004 and have been revised periodically by the POG on the basis of experience. 

Assétou Kanouté (kalilouka@yahoo.fr) from Mali holds a MS in Biology-Ecology /Ranch Management from South Dakota State University, USA. She has 16 years of practical experience in the field with grassroots women organisations.  During that period, she has had an involvement with NGO at national, regional and international NGO.  In Mali, she is executive Secretary of a national woman NGO called ADAF/Gallè.  Her work in this NGO required writing proposals for funding, fundraising, planning, coordinating and implementing. She has high experience in monitoring and evaluating projects and programmes using the participatory impact monitoring approach. She also supervised staff at the office as well as in the fieldwork. She has been member of the steering committee of Project 1000+ of IFDC. In 2007, she became Coordinator of PROFEIS (a sister program of PROLINNOVA) in Mali where she conducted many farmer experimentations and set a strong partnership with farmer network, NGO and the National agricultural research institution called IER (‘Institut d’Economie Rurale’). 

Brigid Letty (bletty@inr.org.za) from South Africa is an agricultural development specialist working with the Institute of Natural Resources (INR), based in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. She is involved in a range of agricultural development work, but has a special interest in participatory approaches to agricultural research and development. Before joining INR in 2003, she worked for six years with the Provincial Department of Agriculture as an animal scientist in the Farming Systems Research Section. She is currently the overall coordinator of Prolinnova–South Africa and also coordinator of the multi-country HAPID sub-programme, which focuses on local innovation and participatory innovation development in the face of HIV/AIDS. She was a member and driving force of a small team that was tasked with developing the strategy document to guide the international Prolinnovanetwork during the period 2011–15. Since 2010, she is collaborating with the University of Pretoria’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development in co-coordinating the JOLISAA (Joint Learning in Innovation Systems in African Agriculture) initiative, which is led by CIRAD (France) and works closely with Prolinnova. 


Marise Espineli (marise.espineli@iirr.org) from the Philippines is a capacity development professional working for the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) based in Cavite, Philippines. Marise has more than 20 years’ experience in designing and conducting workshops and training courses and providing technical assistance to development organisations on participatory project, programme and organisational management. She has special interest in gender mainstreaming in projects and organisations. She has a Master’s degree in International and Intercultural Management from the School for International Training in Vermont, USA. She is now taking her PhD on Applied Cosmic Anthropology at the Asian Social Institute, Manila. She worked with the Aga Khan Foundation in Afghanistan as Director of its Programme for Professional Development for almost three years. She is currently IIRR Asia’s Officer-in-Charge and is also responsible for its international training and outreach activities. As member of the ProlinnovaInternational Support Team, Marise provides support to developing and implementing the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. She facilitated sessions in the initial training of facilitators in participatory innovation development and the recent M&E training for Prolinnovapartners in 2010 in Ethiopia.

Oliver Oliveros (oliveros@agropolis.fr) from the Philippines holds a BSc degree in Human Ecology from the University of the Philippines, a Certificate of Management from John Cabot University in Rome, and a Masters (Acteurs et Nouvelles Territoires) from the Université de Montpellier 3. After working as Senior Economic Development specialist with the Ministry of Socio-Economic Planning in the Philippines, he became Associate Professional Officer with the FAO, working for five years in the Secretariat of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) in Rome as the contact person for Civil Society Organisations and the focal point for Rural Knowledge Systems and Innovation Processes. In 2004, he moved to Montpellier, France, as coordinator of the DURAS (Promotion of Sustainable Development in Agricultural Research Systems in the South) programme. Since 2008 he is Senior Officer for international relations, partnerships, grant coordination and M&E with Agropolis Foundation in Montpellier. He has been a staunch supporter of Prolinnova since his involvement in developing the concept for this initiative in Rambouillet, France, in 1999.

Scott Killough (skillough@wn.org) from the USA is Associate Vice-President for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods of World Neighbors. He has more than 20 years’ experience in participatory development management within an NGO setting, and has field experience in programme development and management, agricultural extension education systems and sustainable agriculture practices in the tropics. From 1990 to 2006, Scott worked with IIRR in the Philippines, where he was involved in all aspects of institutional planning and management, programme development, M&E, oversight of community-based field projects, coordination of international workshops and training, publication and documentation, and numerous technical assistance assignments. These tasks were conducted in various countries mainly in Central America, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa. In the early 1980s, Scott worked for three years in Guatemala in community-based livestock development and as technical trainer of para-veterinary technicians. He holds a BSc in Agricultural Economics and Political Science from Oklahoma State University, a Master's degree in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University, and a PhD in International and Rural Development from the University of Reading, UK, with a dissertation focused on processes and impacts of farmer-to-farmer extension in Central America.

Sergio Larrea (slarream@yahoo.com) from Bolivia is an agronomist who graduated from the “Escuela Agrícola Panamericana” in Honduras in 1997, with a minor on rural development. In the last 13 years, he has been facilitating negotiation processes and management of conflicts related to natural resources. In 1998, he was part of a team documenting rural conflicts for a Honduran network (ANAFAE). From 1999 to 2003, he worked on strengthening indigenous peoples’ organisations in the Ecuadorian Amazon region and on facilitating a participatory natural resource management approach in protected areas in Ecuador. Between 2003 and 2008, he was the coordinator of the “Participatory Management System of the Galapagos Marine Reserve”. From 2008 to 2010, as coordinator of the work of the NGO World Neighbors in Bolivia, he focuses on programmes for agriculture and child nutrition in the north of Potosí. At present, he is based in Quito, Ecuador, and works as an advisor to the Andean programme for Food Sovereignty, financed by IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), a programme being implemented in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

Susan Kaaria (s.kaaria@fordfound.org) from Kenya is Program Officer for Environment and Economic Development with the Eastern African office of Ford Foundation. She has a PhD in Forest Resource Economics and Agricultural Economics. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Susan spent ten years as a scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), working in both Latin America and Africa (Eastern and Southern). She conducted action research in community-based natural resource management; community-based participatory M&E systems, and innovative participatory approaches for increasing access to and benefits from markets by poor and marginalised communities, especially poor rural women. In 2008 she returned to Kenya to take up her current position with the Ford Foundation in Nairobi, where she is programming in the area of enhancing rural livelihoods and sustainability. She co-organised the Innovation Africa Symposium in November 2006 in Uganda in partnership withProlinnova and co-edited the book that came out of that symposium.

Vitou Sam (samvitou@cedac.org.kh) from Cambodia holds a BSc in Forestry from the Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and an MSc in Agriculture and Biology from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He works with CEDAC (Centre d'Etude et de Développement Agricole Cambodgien / Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture) for more than 10 years. He is currently overall coordinator of the Prolinnova–Cambodia network and Director of CEDAC Institute for Local Development (CILD), a CEDAC department that is mainly providing capacity building to youth, farmer promoters and farmer leaders in participatory approaches, agriculture and rural development. He is involved in teaching, training and project development/management in the areas of sustainable agriculture, participatory M&E and participatory innovation development (PID). As coordinator of Prolinnova–Cambodia, he facilitates multi-stakeholder platform building and institutionalisation of participatory approaches into agricultural research and development. He also focuses on issues of curriculum development designed to integrate PID into institutions of higher education in agriculture and rural development.