The 12th RUFORUM Principal Investigators monitoring and learning session organized as a side event at the 15th RUFORUM Annual General meeting on 2nd-3rd December, 2019 converged all research teams of projects granted under the Transforming African Agricultural Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s growth and development (TAGDev project). This was also the first time the Mastercard Foundation met all the project implementers to receive progress updates from the respective teams.
The meeting, which commenced with Prof. Daniel Sherrard, Provost of EARTH University allowed for sharing of experiences from EARTH University with the research teams. Key amongst the issues that emerged were the need to retool professors, lecturers and staff with focus on learning from successful programs on the continent and beyond; increasing the rigor in programs to guarantee that students grasp business and entrepreneurial principles; incorporation of innovation and social or environmental components in entrepreneurial projects; exposure of students to state of the art technologies on value addition; according autonomy to students in decision making and conflict resolution; and, incorporating the business community in the entrepreneurial projects, for example serving as advisors.
Through participation in the Community Action Research Projects (CARP+) and RUFORUM Entrepreneurship Challenge Program (RECAP) projects, research teams reported to have been able to leverage additional funding and support from several agencies including the Potato CARP at Makerere University that secured US$ 62,000 from the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (RIF); US$ 650, 000 to Bindura University of Science education to evaluate the use sub surface water harvesting membranes and tied contours in sandy soils; and, US$ 21,430 to the seed potato CARP at Egerton University amongst others.
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