Output details

Democratising Agricultural Research for Food Sovereignty in West Africa

Research questions

What institutional and methodological innovations are needed to put previously marginalised farmers at the heart of the governance of agricultural research?

Methodologies

Methodologies combined to develop a trustworthy and rigorous process of co-inquiry:

• Multi-actor steering group to oversee the process

• A cycle of reflection-action-reflection controlled and decided by the steering group and farmers themselves

• Farmer-led evaluations of national research programmes

• Methods for Deliberative and Inclusive Processes (DIPs) e.g. citizens' juries

• Video film and radio, with teleconferencing technology to link local voices with decision makers

• Independent oversight panels to ensure fair, transparent and credible processes

• Exchanges with other regions through farmer exchanges for mutual learning, roundtables, seminars and workshops focusing on agricultural research and food security

• Policy and media dialogues at (inter)national levels to bring farmer/citizen voices into decision making processes and definitions of the public good.

Dissemination

A policy dialogue organised in Ghana between farmers and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) ensured widespread dissemination and media coverage of this REF output. This high level policy dialogue was chaired by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. A video conference link between Ghana and the UK House of Parliament allowed West African farmers to voice their policy recommendations to MPs and DFID (a major donor of AGRA).

Information on this REF output was further disseminated through i) a peer reviewed article and two policy briefs; ii) through presentations by the lead author to international research organisations e.g. Bioversity International (2011), the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (2013) and donors (Swiss Development Cooperation, 2013); iii) international farmer exchanges that led to wide dissemination of this output through horizontal networks of farmers and food consumers (e.g St Ulrich workshop on Democratising Agricultural Research, Germany, 2013).