Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["GIBSON RICHARD W" <<address removed>>]

I would like to confirm the importance of using approaches in which 
the range of stakeholders involved in the required technologies work 
together collaboratively. The work on both sweet potatoes and 
cassava to which I referred in my recent emails did, as James 
Biscoe surmised in his response to Berga Lemaga's email,  involve 
such a participatory approach. Furthermore, I wish to emphasise 
that the work was in both cases, as David Harris mentions for his 
research, resourced by DFID  controlled through the Crop 
Protection Programme and the Plant Science Research 
Programme. Indeed, I gained the impression that the fact that the 
projects were taking a participatory approach was important 
(indeed, probably key) to the work being approved and was 
associated with the likelihood that the achievements will actually 
be beneficial to, and therefore adopted by, farmers.

 I would therefore wish to add the further emphasis that that much 
of the technical work, especially perhaps the more recent, funded 
by DFID programmes has been appropriate to the farmers needs, 
has provided farmers with significant economic advantage and has 
therefore been adopted. Dr Harris also mentions the importance of 
projects being 'integrated'. Often the technical research projects 
are integrated within broader thrusts, the DFID-funded component 
generally appearing to provide the research whilst associated 
NGOs or other partners funded through other sources take the 
research achievements forward and disseminate them to farmers. 
The work on the cassava mosaic epidemic in East and Central 
Africa and also on Cassava brown streak virus would be an 
example. This also seems quite a reasonable outcome, each 
playing to their strengths. I mention this, however, because it 
seems very important to acknowledge the value of the underlying 
DFID-funded research rather than just see the more visible work 
impacting directly on the livelihoods of farmers and attribute this 
success solely to the efforts of the other partners. 

sincerely,

Dr Richard Gibson
Dr Richard W Gibson, NRI
Central Ave., Chatham Maritime, Kent, ME4 4TB, UK
Email: <address removed>
Tel: +44 (0)1634 883254
Fax: +44 (0)1634 880066/77
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