This was concluded at a two-day meeting held in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, on 8-9 November, 2022.

The meeting objectives were as follows:

• Develop guidelines on why and how inclusive/participatory approaches can be used in research, innovation, adoption and up scaling projects
• Develop a typology of inclusive/participatory approaches and tools useful to support the DESIRA LIPS projects’ deliverable and outcomes
• Develop a strategy for inclusive/participatory approaches to support local institutional structures and capacity development, sustainability
• Illustrate specific examples on how researchers in surveillance and market assessments can embrace participatory approaches
• Generate research objectives and research questions that could be addressed as part of research on inclusive approaches

Twenty five people attended the meeting, including representatives of key partners such as International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), University of Zimbabwe, as well as contracted third parties  who included academic and research institutions engaged in animal nutrition, propagating forage and feed forages and businesses models on livestock value chains that the project is involved in.

‘’The meeting   looked at platforms and organizational structures that are in the communities that we can best engage to improve adoption of some of the technologies that we are involved in ,‘’ said  Sikhalazo Dube, the project coordinator and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) regional representative for Southern Africa ‘’In addition, this will help the project to improve our engagement with the communities and the local authorities, the rural district councils,” Dube said.

RP-PCP co-coordinator Vladimir Grosbois, a scientist with CIRAD who attended the meeting virtually, highlighted the work done by projects that were being implemented under the framework of the RP-PCP. These were Promoting Sustainable Livelihoods in Transfrontier Conservation Areas, Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme and HUMANI, a project focusing on human-livestock-wildlife interface. 

Discussions also focused on how the project could align itself and be part of the activities  of the country’s  Traditional Leaders Act as well as the Rural District Councils Act.

The meeting recommended to use Innovation, Communication Platforms (ICPs) and Innovation Platforms (IPs).

ICPs bring farmers/communities, private sector, government technicians, NGOs, research institutions and universities and other stakeholders to share experiences, give feedback, and find solutions to their challenges. In the LIPS-Zim project ICPs will link evidence-based research and community transformation through co-identification, co-creation, co-planning, co-implementing, co-monitoring and evaluation, and co-documentation of research on climate-smart feeding practices, adaptive breeds, and animal management practices. Established at village and ward levels the ICPs will promote a bottom up approach that feeds input and feed to the Innovation Platforms (IPs) at the district level for policy development. 

“ICPs can be used as entry points or vehicles into districts or communities by other development agencies, private sector institutions and researchers,’’ said George Mapuvire, executive director of BIO HUB Trust, a LIPS-Zim project third party institution.

It was also agreed that the project should rededicate itself to community engagement at village and ward assemblies and assist to build capacity on some of the resolutions made which affected some of the technologies promoted by the project. This would ensure that the resolutions made at the village and ward assemblies were taken up through existing structures of the Rural District Councils.

“Through these processes the resolutions would find their way to parliament and influence decisions nationally," explained Dube.

The participants also unanimously concluded that it would be best if the project does not create new structures but work with existing institutions and assist them to strengthen their efficiencies so that they articulate better, issues on livestock production systems.

Critical next steps were recommended: The project should immediately go back to the communities to review existing institutions so that there would be better engagement with them and move forward with the research for development work packages.

Read more about LIPS-Zim: https://lips-zim.org/: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/119881