INTERFACES and the regional projects, COINS, DecLaRe and InfoRange came together at the Tropentag Conference from 10 to 12 September in Bonn. Highlight was the pre-conference workshop organised by INTERFACES to identify effective pathways for bridging research and policy in the context of sustainable land development.
The Tropentag Conference is a strategic platform for yearly in-person exchanges across the regional projects and provides an opportunity to engage with various stakeholders. This year’s pre-conference workshop “Bridging the gap: strengthening science-policy interfaces in agricultural research” was a logical continuation of workshops during the last two Tropentag conferences, which dealt with participatory approaches in agricultural research and with agricultural knowledge management.
This workshop, moderated by Dr Michael Bruentrup from IDOS, explored the dynamics of science-policy interaction and sought to equip researchers with practical insights to enhance the visibility and influence of their work. A keynote was delivered by Dr Sieglinde Snapp, Director of the Sustainable Agrifood Systems programme at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), on whether science and policy can be consequential without people, postulating that participatory approaches to improve science and policy are necessary.
This insightful presentation was followed up by World Café style break out groups moderated by INTERFACES researchers on four main themes: (1) the role of funders in designing agricultural research programmes for impact; (2) embedding participation in research-to-policy pathways; (3) adaptive project implementation for local relevance; and (4) strengthening knowledge exchange and Communities of Practice. A separate blog on the results of the World Café will be available shortly on our homepage.
With the 45 workshop participants having brainstormed and exchanged thoughts and experiences in the World Cafés, the stage was cleared for a panel discussion with stakeholders from both policy and science including Theresa Herbold from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Maja Clausen from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity (BMLEH), representing the policy side of the equation. Dr Sieglinde Snapp and Dr Tina Beuchelt, INTERFACES project leader and senior researcher at ZEF, provided critical feedback from the scientific perspective. The panel was rounded off by Mr Benjamin Abugri, the Knowledge Management Specialist from FARA, who stressed the importance of identifying effective communication strategies and cultivating networks that support sustained policy engagement and learning. A general consensus could be found in that there is a discrepancy in the timelines of funders and researchers whereby project cycles are inherently too short to effectively include implementation of research results and community feedback.
Beyond the pre-conference workshop, researchers from across the projects presented their work in oral sessions as well as poster sessions. Most notably, INTERFACES and DecLaRe PhD candidates, respectively Dorcas Sanginga Alame and Frimence Allogbènou Tossou won in the Poster Awards and Cecile Poitevin came second in the Photo Competition with a Photovoice project carried out in the Northern region of Ghana. Furthermore, Michael Bruentrup served as a panellist in the BMZ/GIZ session on why science matters for the transformation of agricultural and food systems, hosted another workshop on making better photos of and in landscapes and agriculture, presented research on fertiliser micro-dosing and chaired a session on soil health.
A short video with impressions from Siegline Snapp, Benjamin Abugri, Kwamboka Tirimba, and Maja Clausen on the pre-conference workshop and Tropentag in general can be viewed here.
The activities of the accompanying project INTERFACES and the four regional projects, COINS, DecLaRe, InfoRange and Minodu are funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the platform strategy Research for Sustainability (FONA). Further information on the projects can be found on our website and on the FONA-Website.
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