In October 2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Gates Foundation) gave a grant to the Southern Africa Trust to implement a project aimed at creating linkages between research, advocacy and media. In the initial implementation of the project, a scoping study and a baseline survey were conducted from the end of March 2011 to the middle of April 2011.
During the month of June 2011, the Trust convened a series of meetings at both national and regional levels. The first regional meeting that brought together leaders and practitioners from media, research and advocacy from the six project focus countries was held on 7 June 2011. The purpose of this regional meeting was to provide further information about the project concept including the proposed strategies as well as proposed project implementation arrangements and to share the emerging findings of the scoping study and the baseline survey conducted between March and April 2011. This report summarizes the deliberations of that meeting held in Pretoria. Participants were drawn from media, research and advocacy organisations working in the area of food security including farmer association from the six project focus countries.
The objectives of the meeting were to:
- Discuss the strategies and scope of the Trust’s project on creating linkages between research, advocacy and media organisations including project implementation arrangements to inform project implementation;
- Share experiences on collaborative policy advocacy interventions and work on food security including successes and constraints and how these have been addressed.
- Discuss and identify priority policy advocacy issues related to agricultural productivity for household food security that research, advocacy and media organisations in the different countries could begin to collaborate on at country level.