The NARES are the principal partners of AfricaRice and partnership is a key element of AfricaRice’s research strategy. The development of new echnologies, their evaluation and effective transfer require well-trained professionals. Also for a partnership to be sustainable, it requires that partners have a similar knowledge base to ensure mutual trust and equity. For these reasons, AfricaRice has made human-resources development one of its priority activities, indispensable for strengthening rice-cultivation capacities of the member-country NARES. AfricaRice will, therefore, continue its efforts in the training and institutional strengthening of the full range of its national partners.

AfricaRice’s past training and communication activities focused primarily on imparting new knowledge and skills to national scientists and research technicians. Often this meant organizing generic courses aimed at training national staff in basic research methods. These courses contributed significantly to broad institution-building goals and have been greatly appreciated by our national partners.

While it is important to maintain that effort, in order to consolidate the progress made in strengthening national partners, wider focus is now necessitated by changing institutional and methodological contexts, together with changing priorities of governments and donors, so as to optimize impact at the farm level.

The institutional environment is changing. There is an increasing role for NGOs and farmers’ organizations in AfricaRice’s work. Thus, there is a need for continuous investment in human-capital development. However, financial resources are declining.

AfricaRice will continue to develop the abilities of national scientists and increase institutional capacity by organizing regional and national courses, and welcoming national scientists and technicians for individual training with special emphasis on promoting women’s involvement in rice research. At the same time, AfricaRice will seek to use new information and communication technologies for internal and external training so that, by the end of the Plan period, AfricaRice should be in a leading position for training activities in the region.

To achieve its capacity building goals, AfricaRice will implement training coalitions with partners including other CG Centers, advanced research and development institutions (e.g. CTA, Winrock International, INTIF, BDPA) and all national stakeholders (including regional universities and institutions).