Abstract:

Developing value chain innovation platforms to improve food
security in East and Southern Africa (VIP4FS) is a four-year
(2015-2019) research project that focuses on identifying factors
that influence and support scalable establishment of effective
and equitable innovation platforms that boost food security
through better engagement of smallholder farmers with markets.
The project goal is to explore how the establishment of value
chain innovation platforms (IPs) — through involvement of the
horizontal and vertical integration of livelihoods and ecosystem
perspectives to enable a wider participation at landscape level
— can be widely adopted to various contexts and applications, including enabling public-private partnerships to create avenues for application of various technology, tools and knowledge streams. The initiative is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (AC IAR) and coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in partnership with the governments of Uganda and Zambia. It will be implemented through a multi-disciplinary partnership of international and national institutions.