This report highlights key achievements and progress made during the period 1st January – 31st March 2021 (the third quarter of the Financial Year 2020/2021, and the third year of implementing the operational plan-2018-2022 of RUFORUM Vision 2030). The Operational Plan is designed around four (4) flagship programmes underpinned by activities to support regional collective action and learning to give stimulus to achieving the RUFORUM vision for vibrant transformative universities catalysing inclusive agricultural development to feed and create prosperity for Africa. The four flagship programmes are:

• Transforming African Agricultural Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (TAGDev) seeks to transform African agricultural universities and their graduates to better respond to developmental challenges through enhanced application of science, technology, business and innovation for rural agricultural transformation.This flagship programme is largely supported by the Mastercard Foundation.
• Cultivating Research and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) seeks to realign universities’ research and teaching functions into a more integrated model with a focus on problem solving and enhancing the capacity of the entire university academic practice and outreach system mainly.
• Regional Anchor Universities for Higher Agricultural Education (RANCH) seeks to escalate the setting up of a network of linked universities as African anchor universities/African centres of excellence and academic leadership in agricultural higher education and learning.
• Knowledge Hub for University Networking, Partnership and Advocacy (K-Hub) builds on RUFORUM’s convening power and facilitates the creation, capture, organising, sharing and refining of information and content across teams and geographic locations –thus increasing access to latest evidence based information and knowledge.

Below are the highlights of progress made across the flagships:

• a) RUFORUM strengthened engagement in new forms of partnerships at national, regional and continental level to support research and development; and, strengthen higher education and agricultural sectors on the continent. This included engagements with several agencies in the Gulf States.
• b) The Republics of Benin and Cameroon signed the RUFORUM Charter,bringing to total eight African Nations along with eSwatini, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
• c) RUFORUM with support from the African Development Bank awarded two Entrepreneurship Challenge Programme (RECAP) grants to MbararaUniversity of Science and Technology (Uganda) and University of Sine Saloum El-Hâdj Ibrahima NIASS (Senegal) to strengthen Agri-entrepreneurship training.
• d) RUFORUM was awarded a grant of US$ 330,000 from the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa to operationalize its African Digital Agriculture Programme (AfriDAP) which, amongst others,aims to strengthen Online Learning and Teachingin its Member universities.
• e) The Secretariat developed the RUFORUM Post COVID 19 strategy to enable member universities respond, recover and build resilience in the medium term.

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