Harnessing Partnerships for Sustainable Intensification Research: Experience from the USAID-Supported Africa RISING Program.

Africa RISING is a USAID supported program designed to implement action research through strategic partnerships that identify and/or validate scalable options for sustainable intensification of key African cereal-based farming systems. It is the investment in functional partnerships that has driven the direction and progress of the program over the last 5 years.   The investment starts with the recognition that, although extensive agricultural research has occurred over a long period of time in the program’s geographical and technical areas, uptake of the results emerging from this research has been at best sporadic. The program’s ambition, therefore, is to develop integrated and attractive technological solutions, as well as impact pathways that ensure research findings actually result in development outcomes in target communities. Research approaches are designed to be inclusive, accessible and capable of developing capacity at multiple levels, allowing opportunities for participation of different stakeholders. To this end, Africa RISING has directly engaged 10 CGIAR centers, 2 international agricultural research centers, 4 international universities, 17 national agricultural research bodies, 14 local universities, 21 national and 9 international development partners, 104 farmer-based organizations and 8875 farmer households. We narrate the initiation and nurturing of the partnership process linking the multi-discipline personnel from multiple institutions, the joint reflection and learning along the way, and give examples of the impacts of the partnerships’ collective action. We conclude that given the complexity of existing smallholder farming systems and the diversity of farmers and agroecologies only partnerships with diverse competences can address the multiple systems challenges to lift a significant number of farmers out of poverty in a sustainable manner. To be functional partners must continually dialogue to define responsibilities, adapt to situations based on collective learning, and ensure partner equity and shared responsibilities. Dysfunctional partnerships must be ended.