Institutions in Africa and UK implementing a project called Building Research Capacity for Sustainable Water and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa (BRECcIA) LEAD SEA and IIED are the impact partners in the consortium and take lead in stakeholder engagement to co-design the BRECcIA project with stakeholders in Africa. The first stake holder engagement meeting took place in Malawi on 30th October, 2018. The Stakeholder workshop drew a wide range of stakeholders who will either affect or be affected by the outcomes of the project. It drew stakeholders ranging from Academia, private sector, government departments, international partners, NGO’s working in the area of policy, water, and food security. Farmers were also represented during the workshop participants agreed on a definition of drylands and went on to identify areas in Malawi that would fit the dry land definition based on their expert knowledge. Participants also looked at challenges in water and food security in the country, gaps in water and food security policies that can be filled to address water and food security challenges in drylands.
This workshop further allowed stakeholders to analyse and contribute to the framing of research questions and providing additional research questions. The process was replicated in Ghana on 22ndNovember, 2018 in Accra and on 27thNovember, 2018 Tamale respectively. The last stakeholder meeting will take place in Kenya in mid-January 2019.
