Overview of the second and third seminar blocks from the project “Transitional Agriculture”

After a successful first block of seminars held between May and June 2020 and culminated with the final webinar titled COVID-19: Resisting Now to Build Back Better, in the context of the project “Transitional Agriculture”, the six national farmers’ organisations participating in the project, namely NASFAM (Malawi),  INGABO (Rwanda),  ZFU (Zimbabwe),  COFAG (Ghana),  AKKOR (Russia) and DBV (Germany) met digitally for two seminar blocks to exchange on “Capacity Development”, a topic of demonstrated shared interest among the six farmers’ organisations. 

The two seminar blocks took place respectively on the 09/09 and 23/09 2020 and the 28/10; 11/11 and 25/11 2020. 

The participants exchanged information and views on their organisation’s activities on capacity development, for their farmers’ members and internal staff as well as the needs of their own Organisation to improve their activities in this field. Farmers’ organisations shared the common vision on capacity development as an important process to meet challenges and shape the future of farming in their Country. 

The six national farmers’ organisations from Malawi, Ghana, Germany, Zimbabwe, Russia and Rwanda also had the chance to present concrete cases on Capacity Development focusing on different topics: international network building and partnerships, service delivery to members, training also focusing on women and youth empowerment, and organizational development. 

The presentation of the case studies created a lively framework to further exchange information among the participants, acquiring knowledge from each other on strategies, also in terms of financing, and service delivery improvements to strengthen the capacity development’s action within the farmers’ organisation, internally and externally towards the respective community of farmers. 

Below, some of the key needs on capacity development, identified by the six farmers’ organisations of the Transitional Agriculture project: 

  • Training of trainers 
  • Increasing added value 
  • Improvement of working conditions 
  • Represent farmers‘ interest 
  • Networking 
  • Increasing commercialization of smallholder agriculture 
  • Lobbying on a legislative level 
  • Sustainable and profitable business models 
  • Increasing number of members 
  • Women and youth in agriculture  

These last blocks of seminars demonstrated once again the importance of peer- to peer exchange as a concrete tool to replicate successful solutions and exchange views on how to tackle common challenges in different contexts. 

 The project Transitional Agriculture will continue in 2021 with other rounds of seminars on topics of shared interest among the participating farmers’ organisations. 

About the project “Transitional Agriculture”

The project “Transitional Agriculture” was launched by the Association of Peasant Farms and Agricultural Cooperatives of Russia (AKKOR) and the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), under the umbrella of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) in January 2020.
This three-year exchange project aims to collaborate closely with African Farmer Organizations on challenges and solutions of farming in fast-changing agriculture. The African partner organizations are the Coalition of Farmers-Ghana (COFAG), the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM), the Rwandan Farmers ‘Organization (INGABO), and Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union (ZFU). The cooperation is accompanied and supported by the Andreas Hermes Academy (AHA) and AgrarKontakte International (AKI) e.V.