News
CEA-FIRST & StEPPFoS, two new strategic African-European research collaboration projects launched
The African Union and the European Union, alongside 22 implementing partners, have launched the Consortium Europe-Africa on Research and Innovation for Food Systems Transformation, the CEA-FIRST Project.
The CEA FIRST project brings together partners from Europe and Africa covering a wide range of expertise and stakeholders (research, NGOs, donors, extension workers, etc.) involved in the field of food and nutritional security and sustainable agriculture.
CEA-First represents a larger and far-reaching formation that promises to revolutionise the partnership and working arrangements between African and European institutions.
CEA-FIRST will operationalise an International Research Consortium (IRC) on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA) as a long-term platform in line with the FNSSA Roadmap of the AU-EU High-Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD). The IRC will be a member-based, multi-actor platform and will work towards increasing synergies and coherence while reducing fragmentation and duplication of research efforts. Its aim is to promote higher returns on investments and impact on business development in Africa and Europe, by linking actors, research and innovation projects, initiatives, and funding programmes. The IRC is positioning itself as a vital tool for fostering an equitable and sustainable research and innovation partnership between Africa and Europe. This partnership focuses on bolstering agriculture as a key driver of economic development.
Adjacent to the CEA-FIRST kick-off was a second kick-off of an African-European collaboration project, Strengthening Evidence-Based Policy Practice for Sustainable Food Systems under the AU-EU Partnership (StEPPFoS). It is designed to promote policy coherence and alignment across the Pan-African Network for Economic Analysis of Policies (PANAP) and Food & Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FNSSA) to contribute towards minimising fragmentation of policy initiatives in the agri-food sector at national and regional levels.