The project started on 1st December 2016 for a 5 years duration, and was extended one year mostly for pandemic reasons. It involved 30 partners, including 24 Ministries and Funding Agencies from 18 European and African countries, which decided to join their forces and financial supports, with the financial support of the European Commission.
All 24 funding agencies defined the priorities and text for the R&I cofounded call for proposals on FNSSA of LEAP-Agri.
Twenty-seven projects were selected for funding by the Group of Funders. A total budget of 22,7 Mi€ has been dedicated to the funding of the projects. The European Commission contribution (33% of the total budget) was allocated to the funding agencies so that they could fulfil their commitments related to the teams in the 27 selected projects.
Even deeply impacted by covid pandemic which hampered all exchanges between Africa and Europe, all face to face meeting (students, stakeholders’ events, capacity building …); disturbed or hampered field trials and laboratory experiments, all projects ended with numerous outputs and outcomes :
• 742 transnational cooperation and mobility actions
• 915 dissemination actions (workshops, seminars, promotional material)
• 512 publications (included “in preparation”, “submitted” and “accepted/published”), from which 179 published documents in peer-reviewed literature
• 173 scientific and innovation products
Furthermore, the consortia have already developed or plan to develop new activities, including R&I projects, capacity building and knowledge sharing and operational structures and systems.
Regarding the additional activities aiming at designing long-term AU-EU collaborations, the consortium of LEAP-Agri produced three public documents:
• Feeding the AU-EU long term partnership in Research and Innovation on FNSSA
• Report on lessons learned from exploring new modalities for collaboration and alignment” is based on the analysis and synthesis of a survey from LEAP-Agri members
• Report on lessons learned from exploring new modalities for collaboration and alignment
Based on LEAP-Agri experience, other funding initiatives, strategic R&I agendas and various global analysis for FNSSA, these documents provide recommendations for the future on agricultural practices, species of interest for FNSSA in changing climate conditions, on access to seeds as well as farm development, management of soil erosion and of water access, improving nutrition, food security and the financial income of farmers (all documents).
The LEAP-Agri consortium found that the bi-continental STI cooperation is an effective level for agroecological programs, but within this frame one as to ensure that the defined topics at the bi continental level are in accordance with the R&I national research priorities.
LEAP-Agri partners suggest that R&I funded projects should contribute to face the common AU-EU challenges of scaling farms, which will be economic viable, ensure well-being of animals, farmers and consumers, improve nutrition and food security, limit greenhouse gas emission and global warming, promote biodiversity and protect soils and natural resources. (D1.6)
In relation with the HLPD roadmap they confirm that there is a strong need for defining cross cutting themes (D6.2 D6.1).
They propose that in the future initiatives there is an equilibrium of funding the continuation of previous projects and funding new ones (D6.1 D6.2)
During the life time of LEAP-Agri, two meetings were organized for involving more stakeholders in the R&I projects from the identification of the topics to implementations of the projects, their participation to the projects and the use of their outputs and outcomes. The first one “LEAP-Agri Knowledge Sharing and Stakeholders Engagement Matchmaking event” (virtual event 15-16/12/2021) aimed at facilitating as soon as possible the transfer and appropriation of research results by relevant stakeholders, the second one in the frame of the LEAP-Agri Final Conference “requests from different actors of the FNSSA sector for further AU-EU partnership on FNSSA” on 28/10/2022 aimed at recording stakeholders’ (private, farmers association, researchers’ networks...) needs and recommendation for further bicontinental collaborations and programs on FNSSA.
