Indicators, indicators! They really get people talking!

Participatory M&E workshop towards the preparation of the Final Report on the EU Food Facility in West Africa

by Adriane Del Torto

Today, we opened the two day workhop on M&E for the EU Food Facility. Present at the worksessions were the M&E specialits and Production specialits from Benin, Mali, Senegal, Ghana and ICRISAT. The meetings took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso at 'Eau Vive" a local NGO on 26 and 27 January 2012.

The objective of the meeting is to take stock of the efforts already made in M&E at the project level and to come up with an action plan to enable to collect qualitative data for the final report to the EU. The idea of a participatory M&E workshop came from some brainstorming between myself and some CPMs and the M&E consultant who is part of the team producing the final report as a solution to the lack of time for a mission visiting all components of the Food Facility in less than one month. 

The first day of the workshop was mainly to discuss results achieved and activities which did not take place and why. Then the group went through all of the EU indicators and discussed the relevance of many of those requested by the programme. In many cases, it was pointed out that baseline data was missing and that it would be difficult to report on all of the indicators in both the Logframe and the EU table. Each indicator was discussed and put into context to ensure proper understanding of the mechianisms.

Thi step was not planned on the original agenda, however, when considering the complexity of the programme, made of 7 distinct grant agreements, it became quite relevant to discuss requirements in order to have a somewhat harmonious report.

One we had agreed on the quantitative indicators, the rest of the day was dedicated to the qualitative ones. Adding a qualitative dimension to the final report of the EU FF was suggested to the EU during my last mission in Brussels in December 2011. My proposal was very much appreciated by the Programme Manager at the EU, who is very much looking forward to reading our results.

The lead M&E consultant and the group identified a series of themes and specific questions to ask programme stakeholders in order to collect the qualitative type data sought. These were accompanied by a list of information sources and data verification documents.

This first day, was a bit long, however, the output was quite positive. The debates between participants were lively and engaging and the colleagues present were strongly motivated by others' comments and questions. Let's  hope the ambiance at its best tomorrow as well.

Dernières lignes droites avant la clôture du PFA : Réunion Suivi-Evaluation

Le programme de la Facilité Alimentaire (PFA) de l’Union Européenne en Afrique de l’Ouest entre dans sa phase finale. Le FIDA, comme stipulé dans les accords avec l’Union Européenne, doit soumettre un rapport de fin d’activités au plus tard le 31 mars 2012.
L’objectif général de ce rapport est de présenter les principaux résultats obtenus par le Programme, les difficultés rencontrées dans la conduite des activités, les leçons et les enseignements à tirer de cette expérience, de renforcement des capacités des différents pays en matière de production et de diffusion de semences et de boutures certifiées.

Dans l’optique de la rédaction de ce rapport, une réunion sur le suivi-évaluation aura lieu à Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso, du 25 au 27 janvier 2012.

La réunion, composée de responsables suivi-évaluation et de chefs de composantes du PFA, sera menée par Adriane Del Torto, Chargée de Programme Associée, par M. Daniel Thieba, consultant en Suivi-Evaluation et par M. Fatogoma Diarra, consultant expert agronome.

Les objectifs de l’atelier sont les suivants :
Faire le point sur l’état d’avancement dans la collecte des informations sur la mesure des indicateurs
Faire le point sur le travail restant à être réalisé (données statistiques et collecte des données qualitatives auprès des paysans)
Rappeler et identifier les indicateurs complémentaires à ceux déjà mentionnés dans les cadres logiques, pour mesurer l’impact du programme
Préciser la répartition des rôles entre les acteurs partis prenantes de la conduite de l’évaluation
Préparer les visites sur le terrain pour le mois de février 2012.

Suite à ces deux jours de réunion, un plan d’action sera adopté.

#sfrome: The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (17)

Written by Dalia Mattioni

As they say, small is beautiful. And indeed this meeting was small: 5 participants with quite a diverse background- IFAD, an international Swiss NGO, Bioversity – all of whom passionately participated to the debate on how to ensure the sustainability of the FSN Forum. Many ideas were given to the FSN Forum Team on the topic ranging from carrying out user (satisfaction) surveys to ensure that user needs are constantly catered for, to setting up incentive systems based on assigning “loyalty” points to users depending on the frequency (and quality) of their interventions. But while the group may have been small, their range of comments on another topic certainly wasn’t.

Decentralisation was the other hot topic for the FSN Forum team, and here participants shared their suggestions on how to set up Regional FSN Forums, without fragmenting the Global Forum. One of these was placing links to the Regional Forums on the main FSN website so that users would need to go through the Global website to access the Regional sites. The seminar lasted 1 hour, but the debate went on (or is it still going on??) beyond the welcoming Bangladesh Room, into the busy cafeteria…

#sfrome Underground Treasures: Root and Tuber Crops for Food Security in Asia-Pacific (212)

Written by Rima Alcadi

Food security in the South is more than just cereals. Root and tuber crops (RTCs – including potatoes, cassava and sweet potatoes) rank among the seven most important food crops in developing countries. Asia-Pacific is home of the world’s RTCs – as the region with the highest production, consumption and utilization of these crops. Besides being staple food especially among indigenous peoples and poor households, RTCs are an affordable source of nutrition and offer income-generating opportunities through their versatile and multiple uses. The session was presented by Dindo Campilan, from the Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP), a CGIAR centre.

The Root and Tuber Crops for Food Security in Asia-Pacific is a CIP project funded by IFAD, approved in December 2010. How did this project start? In 2008 during the rice crisis, IFAD sent a mission to Asia for verifying how to rapidly increase the production of rice. But once there, we found that the farmers were actually eating roots and tuber crops, so we decided to focus on these instead, for enhancing food security.

In Asia, although the primary focus is on rice for food security and self-sufficiency, there are many places where roots and tubers are staples. Even in the Indo-Gangetic plains, in which the rice-based food system prevails, sweet potatoes are grown in between the rice seasons.

In this session, we learnt about innovative products and uses of these underground treasures, which have been undervalued and neglected in agricultural research and development efforts. We were introduced to a lot of different products - from taro, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, yam etc.

Of course, we were allowed to taste many of these products, including chips (salty as well as sweet), bread, purple yam jam and so on. We brought glass noodles made from sweet potatoes back home for tasting too!

We also shared our experience from our own countries, or from our work experience. Chiara Calvosa (IFAD) highlighted that during the war in certain areas in Africa, people used to eat cassava leaves, as “famine food “. So a major impediment in promoting the consumption of cassava leaves is the stigma attached to it - people do not want to be reminded of the bad times. Indeed, the need to overcome the fact that people associate these crops as “poor people’s foods” (as in the case of most neglected and underutilised crops – NUS) is a major challenge. Branding can play a very important role in this regard.

Another peculiar challenge faced with roots and tubers in Asia is that their health properties are not recognised. So although potatoes have almost 0 fat and are quite nutritious, people associate them to french-fries! The project is addressing such challenges– using several knowledge sharing tools involving the media, celebrities acting as champions, chefs, extensionists, Facebook, YouTube and so on. We thought it would be interesting for CIP to work more with schools as well – promoting school gardens, inter-generational exchange of knowledge and simple modules that could be easily adapted to the various disciplines, to students’ different age groups and to the teachers’ personalities. These ideas were based on IFAD-funded projects implemented by Bioversity International and Oxfam Italia.

Some interesting facts that we learnt?

• Sweetpotatoes are not potatoes – they belong to the morning-glory family. Unlike the potato - which is a tuber, or stem - the sweetpotato is a root.

• There are over 4,000 edible varieties of potato, mostly found in the Andes of South America.

• The potato is the third most important food crop in the world in terms of human consumption. More than a billion people worldwide eat potato.

• Do not peel your potatoes – you will lose the micronutrients!

For more information, please contact Dr Dindo Campilan: d.campilan@cgiar.org

#sfrome: Transmitting food culture through art (25)

Written by Marta Millere

Today at 14:00 we were able to catch up with FAO consultant Sandro Dernini who presented his thoughts on art as a possible tool to transmit food culture.

His vision was one of an anthropological nature and he argued that food should not be seen solely as a container of nutrients but also as a means of expressing one’s (human) culture and heritage. We learned that the know-how of the people across the world is a form of biodiversity itself and must be protected, and a way to this could be through art.

Through art we can express our cultural identities but also embrace something that is almost a universal language. It is a communication tool that can be used to revitalize people’s interest on food and to make nutrition and biodiversity appealing and understandable to many, therefore possibly leading to a greater good: one of food and nutrition safety.

In this session we enjoyed hearing that through art peoples’ awareness of existent but most importantly - forgotten foods - can be brought back to “life”. Sandro also told us about successes of the FAO project on school-gardens in which he was involved, and how by growing their own food, schools in Bangladesh, Cuba and Rwanda were able to balance their own diets.

Sandro mentioned the global problem of youth slipping away from their heritage and eating foods that are not part of their culture, foods that are actually bad to them because they are poor in nutrients. The ever existing issue of people thinking that local and “ancient” foods are “food for the poor” and therefore not appealing to those who strive to be modern was also raised.

Sandro also introduced Brazilian artist Glaucia Coelho Demenjour who will be joining Amedeo Modigliani in what the artist herself called an “edible installation” in the light of the World Food week. This event will take place October 24th in FAO.

Photo by: Glaucia Coelho Demenjour

My first “webinar” on topic close to my heart: Food and nutrition security

by Steven Navon Schonberger 

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to join a "webinar" discussion on food security hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition. For those as technologically out of date as myself, a webinar is a virtual seminar in which the speakers are streamed by internet to a broader audience which can send in comments and questions in real time to the moderator. For a regional economist used to the familiar meeting rooms and conference halls in developing and developed countries, debating issues in front of TV cameras was quite a challenge. First of all, the webinar was held in a TV studio in Milan, which is an instant recipe for stage fright. Trying to concentrate on your response while the moderator subtly gestures to look at the camera with the red light on is harder than it sounds. Secondly, the moderator and other panellists were top notch, creating painful flashbacks of university seminars so many years ago. The host of the Webinar was Alex Thompson, a TV anchor and war correspondent (he was just back from Basra) from Channel 4 news in the U.K., and the co-panellists were David Dawe of FAO - a true expert on price formation and policy; and Professor Andrea Boltho of Oxford University - a well known macro-economist. Finally, unbeknownst to David and I, Alex and Professor Boltho had decided to "spice up" this edition of the Webinar by throwing in some leading questions and seeding disagreement - what fun!

Bottom line: I will not be looking to take over Oprah's talk show job.

But seriously, the webinar was a chance to emphasize IFAD's message that supporting smallholder farmers is critical to addressing food security and nutrition challenges in the world. It was good to see that most of the audience felt that the biggest issue is grappling with the impact of an ever growing population on a resource constrained planet and that issues of food security are highly compelling symptoms of this broader challenge. There also seems to have been interest in Professor Boltho's proposal to tax junk food. Overall, it seems that things did not come out as badly as I thought (I have not had the guts to watch it yet) - my name is still on the office door at IFAD. If you'd like to watch the webinar or learn more about the Barilla Centre, make sure you check out their website.

Semer les expériences: Comité de Pilotage de la Facilité Alimentaire de l'UE

Ce matin jeudi 26 mai 20011 s’est ouvert, à Rome, dans l’enthousiasme, la première réunion du comité de pilotage de la Facilité Alimentaire de l’Union Européenne-FIDA-CEDEAO pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Ce programme, lancé par l’UE en 2008, pour faire face à l’envolée des prix des denrées et pour renforcer la sécurité alimentaire, a démarré effectivement en 2010. Le FIDA est chargé de mettre œuvre les activités de ce programme dans le cadre de ses projets en cours au Bénin, en Côte d’Ivoire, au Ghana, au Mali et au Sénégal. Une partie des fonds a aussi été alouée à l'ICRISAT et à la CEDEAO.
La quarantaine de participants ont été accueillis par M. Mohamed Béavogui, Directeur de la Division de l’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre du département de la Gestion des Programmes du FIDA et Mme Katariina Batsos, Déléguée de l’UE à Bruxelles, Chargée de Programme pour la Facilité Alimentaire.
Les sujets abordés lors du comité de pilotage, notamment l’accès aux semences améliorées, la sensibilisation des acteurs, l’inclusion des femmes et des jeunes dans les activités du programme, le suivi évaluation, seront discutés sous l’angle des innovations et des gains rapides, et des difficultés à surmonter.
Le comité de pilotage se fait en un moment clé. En effet, le programme est actuellement dans sa vitesse de croisière et phase cruciale de la mise en œuvre puisque la saison des pluies et le moment de semer les champs vient de commencer.
Les participants des pays bénéficiaires de la Facilité Alimentaire ainsi que des représentants de l’UE, du FIDA, de ICRISAT et du ROPPA sont très heureux de pouvoir saisir cette opportunité de partage de leurs expériences. Chacun a présenté les avancées et les défis rencontrés au cours de ces derniers mois et a pu échanger ses expériences et identifier des synergies sur la base d’activités exécutées dans la sous-région pour améliorer sa stratégie de mise en œuvre du programme, qui viendra à sa fin cette année.