Capacity Development to support country implementation of ENABLE Youth and TAAT to transform Africa’s agriculture
Dissemination and delivery of technologies at scale is now an important part of IITA’s work as it seeks to have impact in its effort to transform Africa’s agriculture. The Capacity Development Office (CDO) has an important role to play in this. During the inaugural P4D Week, the head of CDO, Zoumana Bamba, presented on the changes that have taken place.
Bamba highligthing the new changes in the structure of the capacity development office.
Bamba said CDO will work more to support countries implement the Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment (ENABLE Youth) project that the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) is rolling out across many African countries and to which IITA is providing technical support.
ENABLE Youth especially targets countries such as Central Africa Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Sudan where IITA has little or no presence.
Bamba said the unit has been focusing on training individuals but now realizes this is not enough as IITA moves into large-scale technology dissemination. CDO will now support countries in pre-incubation, incubation, and post-incubation activities of the ENABLE Youth Program.
“Pre-incubation activities include assessing existing technologies and resources, developing training programs, and setting up the incubation centers. The incubation period will have a lot of training and capacity building activities on areas such as technical and business skills to support the youth with their start-ups. And in post-incubation, the program will continue to mentor and support them.
The unit has three new objectives: provide technical assistance to improve capacity to deliver technologies at scale along the value chains; support IITA’s capacity to achieve its mission and contribute to development; and share learning materials, methodologies, and tools.
