USAID has held regional workshops to inform programming for the US Government’s Feed the Future initiative in Eastern and Southern Africa. The workshop for West Africa is planned for November. The workshop for Eastern Africa was held in Kampala, Uganda during October 15-19, 2012. On the third day of the workshop, Joseph Karugia made a presentation on ReSAKSS capacity building activities and establishment of country SAKSS Nodes. The last two days of the workshop, Oct. 18-19 were dedicated to policy discussions on three priority areas, with presentation from IFPRI/ReSAKSS team:

1. agricultural input policy – presentation made by Godfrey Bahiigwa, IFPRI/ReSAKSS-AW
2. agriculture trade policy – presentation made by Joseph Karugia, ILRI/ReSAKSS-ECA
3. resilience policy – presentation made by Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse – IFPRI-Addis Ababa

The presentations on agricultural input policy and agricultural trade policy were informed by a paper written by Diao, et al (2012) on “Evidence on Key Policies for African Agricultural Growth”.

The workshop for the Southern Africa region was held in Maputo, Mozambique during October 22-26, and again the last two days, October 25-26 were dedicated to policy discussions, but focusing on two areas: (i) agricultural trade policy, and (ii) agricultural input policy and both presentations were made by Godfrey Bahiigwa. The ReSAKSS-SA Coordinator, Greenwell Matchaya also attended the workshop.

One key issue to note for ReSAKSS and SAKSS, at both workshops there was a call for more coordination of policy networks and strengthening of in-country analytical capacity.  The need to establish country SAKSS nodes to strengthen analysis in-country as well as mutual accountability during annual sector reviews was highlighted. The implication is that we need to speed up establishment of country SAKSS nodes because expectations are very high.

The summary was prepared by Godfrey Bahiigwa (G.Bahiigwa@cgiar.org), ReSAKSS-Africa Wide coordinator.

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