(major reshuffling of the South Africa page under way - please be patient)
JOLISAA activities in South Africa have been coordinated by the University of Pretoria, through the Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development. The coordinator, Joe Stevens, was supported by Brigid Letty from the Institute of Natural Resources, previous national coordinator of Prolinnova–South Africa. The national team also included Gerrit Rootman from the Limpopo Department of Agriculture.
Initially, the JOLISAA national team undertook a process of identifying multi-stakeholder agricultural innovation processes. These were mainly identified through the existing networks of the national team members, including Cerkia Bramley and Hlami Ngwenya, who participated in the team along the way.
Following the identification of 11 cases that met the JOLISAA criteria – amongst other things, having three or more different stakeholders actively engaging in the innovation process, and being sufficiently mature – three were chosen for more in-depth analysis. The latter was known as the “collaborative case assessment” (CCA), as the process was designed to allow for engaging stakeholders involved in the selected cases. The three cases for which a CCA was conducted were as follows:
Province | CCA case |
Limpopo | Enhancing farmers’ organisational and experimentation capacities for soil fertility management in smallholder cropping systems in two irrigation schemes in Vhembe District of Limpopo Province – which was an outcome of the GTZ/BASED programme |
Free State | The development and testing of infield rainwater harvesting technologies at Thaba Nchu in the Free State – an initiative involving smallholder farmers, the Agricultural Research Council and the Free State Department of Agriculture |
KwaZulu-Natal | The development of a bulk-buying system linked to savings and credit groups that aimed to improve access to inputs for smallholder farmers – an initiative supported by SaveAct, a NGO that promotes financial literacy, and Farmer Support Group, outreach arm of the University of KwaZulu-Natal |
The field work and report writing was largely undertaken by students: Ntando Buthelezi and Wojciech Jabiello, with the support of Elias Sebolai (ARC), Robert Segano and Lesala Lohlolo (Department of Agriculture Free State) in the case of the Free State; and Silvia Storchi (SaveAct) and Zanele Shezi and Michael Malinga from Farmer Support Group (University of KwaZulu-Natal) in KZN. The Limpopo case was documented by Gerrit Rootman and Michael Netshivodzha with support of Tshengedzo Tshithive and Phineas Mukhanu, Limpopo Department of Agriculture.
The JOLISAA project also involved national and global workshops to support joint learning through the exchange of knowledge and experiences. Based on the findings of the project, policy recommendations were developed and the findings have also been shared at various conferences.
In May, the national team attended the Agricultural Innovation Systems in Africa (AISA) workshop in Kenya that was held in conjunction with the final global JOLISAA meeting. This provided opportunity for more intensive exchange of experiences with a broader stakeholder group and sharing of South African experiences through the presentation of two posters.
The various documents and reports prepared over the duration of the project will soon be available on this website.
Any additional queries can be directed to Joe Stevens (joe.stevens@up.ac.za), Brigid Letty (bletty@inr.org.za) or Gerrit Rootman (gt.rootman@gmail.com).
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