By Betty Tole, IFADAfrica
The Global South-South Development (GSSD) Expo 2013 entered its second day yesterday, 29 October 2013, featuring Solution Exchange Forums led by various UN agencies and a leadership round table.
Dominic Wanjihia, the CEO of Biogas International Ltd. Kenya, was the first on the floor explaining how the innovative Flexi Biogas Technology that was manufactured in Kenya is expanding renewable energy sources for families in Kenya. The Flexi Biogas System is simpler and less costly to build and operate. So far, over 300 systems have been installed since 2011. IFAD is partnering with Biogas International to install nine systems on dairy farms as part of the IFAD-supported Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Programme in parts of the Rift Valley, in Kenya. In Naivasha, for example, four orphanage schools are using kitchen and human waste to produce electricity for lighting and to provide Internet access. The company is seeking partners to enable scaling-up to other parts of Africa and the rest of the world.
Johannes Linn, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution brought in the aspect of focusing on learning from successes and failures in order to achieve south-south cooperation. He said we should put in place a mechanism to drawing on lessons from monitoring and evaluation processes.
The Global South-South Development (GSSD) Expo 2013 entered its second day yesterday, 29 October 2013, featuring Solution Exchange Forums led by various UN agencies and a leadership round table.
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| IFAD Stand at the GSSD Expo |
The objective of the GSSD Expo Solution
Exchange Forums is to provide a platform for interactive discussions and
presentation of successful Southern development solutions taking various forms
such as southern-grown solutions, south-south partnership solutions,
North-South-South triangular partnership solutions, and public-private
partnership solutions.
Scheduled at the end of the day was the
Solution Exchange Forum 3 on Agriculture and Food Security was led by IFAD and
FAO. The solutions presented and discussed in this forum were designed to
support families and societies in coping with the effects of climate change and
depleting energy sources. The forum was divided into two sessions, starting
with FAO and then IFAD.
The Key Note Speaker Dennis Garitty UN Drylands Ambassador and Senior Fellow World Agro-forestry Centre said "even the poorest countries countries can add value". He mentioned south south cooperation among poor countries in west Africa that is yielding results and is being scaled up.
The experience was from agro-forestry work done in Niger, currently at 5 million ha. Through cross country exchange visits and policy support, the technology has spread to Mali 450,000 ha in Seno Plains, Nigeria, Ethiopia Malawi, and currently Zambia are adopting it.
Cheikh
Sourang, the IFAD Senior Programme Manager and Focal Point, South-South and
Triangular Cooperation, in the Strategy and Knowledge Department, moderated the
session, which was later hailed by one of the participants as the most
captivating of the day. It was one of the well attended Solution Forum. There was a call to organizers to separate the two sessions for FAO and IFAD next year.
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| Cheik Sourang moderates the IFAD Panel Session |
Dominic Wanjihia, the CEO of Biogas International Ltd. Kenya, was the first on the floor explaining how the innovative Flexi Biogas Technology that was manufactured in Kenya is expanding renewable energy sources for families in Kenya. The Flexi Biogas System is simpler and less costly to build and operate. So far, over 300 systems have been installed since 2011. IFAD is partnering with Biogas International to install nine systems on dairy farms as part of the IFAD-supported Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Programme in parts of the Rift Valley, in Kenya. In Naivasha, for example, four orphanage schools are using kitchen and human waste to produce electricity for lighting and to provide Internet access. The company is seeking partners to enable scaling-up to other parts of Africa and the rest of the world.
Abdelkarim Sma, the IFAD Regional Economist
for Near East, North Africa and Europe Division, shared on how the
shift from conventional to conservation agriculture is happening in the
Republic of Moldova. The initiative
adopted knowledge management as an instrument to support conservation
agriculture. As a result, there has been
a significant shift with a third of the 600 trained farmers having adopted
conservation farming.
Maija Peltola, Director General of Procasur, a global organization specialized in harvesting and scaling up homegrown innovations. Their models emphasize on supporting rural development using the bottom up approach. The 18 years old organization is facilitating farmer to farmer exchanges both physically and virtually. Since 2006, they have implemented learning routes in more than 30 countries in four continents. She noted that challenges remains top down approach of many institutions.
Liu
Ke, the Associate Country Programme Officer of IFAD Asia and the Pacific
Division, made a presentation on how China managed to reduce its incidence of
poverty between1981 - 2005, using the Household Responsibility System, and
other strategies. He shared the lessons
they have drawn from the programme key among them – the ownership model –
urging countries to “remain at the driving seat” He also called for a culture
of learning from mistakes, seeking home driven innovations and also learning
from what others have done. Liu’s presentation drew a lot of interest from
participants as was evident from their comments during the plenary session.
In
his remarks, Steve Thomlow said to achieve south-south cooperation, there is
need to create development space by changing the command and control
structure. Missing links also need to be
addressed. he mentioned that it was interesting that in the whole discussion, the role of the private sector in harnessing inputs,
improving access to equipment, access to markets and the issue of access to a financing mechanism.
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| Africa harvest Presentation Stand at GSSD |
Johannes Linn, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution brought in the aspect of focusing on learning from successes and failures in order to achieve south-south cooperation. He said we should put in place a mechanism to drawing on lessons from monitoring and evaluation processes.
The
last speaker, Robson Mutandi, the
IFAD Country Director in Ethiopia asked the question ‘why and
what are we scaling up?’ He said without credible data and information, and
evidence of the models that work, scaling up will not work. He said there is
need for an innovation enabled environment, that is, "the system should allow you to experiment on scaling up” said Mutandi. He said
to achieve south-south cooperation there is need for partnerships, to address the
issue of limited resources.
The session closed with comments and
questions from participants. The discussions will be continued during another
IFAD Partnership Forum “Scaling up Development Impact through
South-South and Triangular Cooperation scheduled on Thursday, 31 October 2013.
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