Training: Mainstreaming CSA and CIS into West Africa's university curricula
In the news:
- EnviroNews Nigeria: Ghanaian universities to develop curricula in climate-smart agriculture, climate information services
- Interview of Prof. Daouda Kone, Director of WASCAL Capacity Building Programme
- A segment on Côte d'Ivoire's RTI2
Background
The Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project builds on the initiatives and achievements under the CGIAR Research Program on the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in Africa. With a focus on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies and on climate information services (CIS), the AICCRA project includes an important capacity development component for the benefit of six (6) countries in Africa.
RUFORUM is a global partner to AICCRA to work in West Africa and the East and Sothern Africa but also to work at the continental level. RUFORUM as a Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture working in West Africa with WASCAL which is a Regional Institution on Capacity Building and Adapted Land Use to develop curricula and training materials that will make accessible to other SSA countries, the knowledge on CSA and climate agro-advisory services generated in the six intervention countries. WASCAL has signed a contract with CIAT to achieve this objective under the global partnership RUFORUM has with AICCRA to be able to stress on and capacity development focus on actors’ access to knowledge and tools related to Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Climate Information Services (CIS).
The RUFORUM/ WASCAL activities in West Africa align to the AICCRA Project Development Objective indicators to:
- support the uptake of climate-smart agriculture innovations through piloting;
- knowledge generation and sharing for effective services; and
- partnerships for delivery
The main actors targeted in the different Universities are all Universities’ staff and students, extension service providers and other partners working with universities to delivers climate agro-advisory services generated in the six core intervention countries and beyond.
Moreover the vulnerability across the region will be considered in paying attention to gender in all the activities and in the participation of women in the training and other activities undertaken under all component of the project.
Objectives
The general objective is to create awareness, train lecturers and share to them the training material developed on four thematic modules on CSA and CIS to contribute to AICCRA overall objectives on training material development that are going to be made available through RUFORUM online platform.
- Create awareness by sharing with the participants the relevance of CSA and CIS as well as the AICCRA project impact for Africa
- Conduct in person training of lecturers on the modules developed mainly targeting lecturers that are WASCAL alumni from Cote d’Ivoire (75%) and other WASCAL alumni from West Africa, as well as lecturers and Deans across Cote d’Ivoire Universities (25%)
- Collect feedbacks from trainees for further improvement of the four modules
- Disseminate by making available the training material developed for their future lecturers;
- Get from the University decision making mandatory the use of CSA and CIS in the University system
Deliverables
- InfoNote documenting the whole process: gap/need assessment, testing and validation, lessons learnt and dissemination across universities in Africa, including non-AICCRA countries university reached [WASCAL/RUFORUM]
- Training report including insights of the participants.
- The results from this workshop will contribute to significantly influence the university course/s taught in the future
The different modules developed, tested, and validated will be compiled to have the following documents which will be shared with participants:
- Training manual (module)
- Powerpoint presentation, film, flyers, posters
Impact
- Awareness created for university leadership on CSA and CIS
- The most important change through the meeting is the availability of courses content for sustainable implementation into the university systems in the future
- Discuss how the trainees can get access to RUFORUM platform for the use of the CSA/CISinformation
After the in-person training, a certificate will be given to the trainees.
Previous session
Ghana, 13- 15 September 2023
in-person-training-of-lecturers-on-wascal-ruforum-modules_kumasi-kd.pdf