Regional agricultural research coordination

SACCAR will implement the project in the areas of agricultural research (AR) coordination, workshops and training, documentation and publications, and career development grants and special studies. Consultancies and travel grants will be provided to help SACCAR - which will be established initially as a semi-autonomous unit of the Botswana Ministry of Agriculture - promote coordination in AR among and within SADCC member states, establish linkages with other AR organizations and donors, and identify special areas for cooperation, including the maintenance of inventories of SADCC member countries" AR capacities, of natural resource and ecological information, and of new regional AR initiatives. Activities will be selected by the member states themselves and will be agreed upon by the SADCC"s Consultative Technical Committee for AR (CTC/R), The project will support some 450 person-weeks of workshops, seminars, and conferences geared to: fulfilling specific AR training needs, esecally in the area of AR management; addressing common and high-priority AR problems; promoting multidisicplinary approches to AR; and helping to compile and synthesize information on priority AR topics. The project will fund: an annual update of the inventory of national and regional AR systems; a regional newsletter and an AR journal (16 and 8 issues, respectively, during the life of the project); and the publication of about 25 special papers and seminar reports. About 2,000 copies of each document will be printed. The project will support two SACCAR grant programs geared toward career development - a small research grants program, and grants for intra-regional travel. The project will also make funds available for special studies (which will summarized in SACCAR"s annual report and will be presented to the CTC/R) and for consultancies aimed at directly assisting SACCAR in its functions. Other donors include the Canadian Development Agency (CIDA), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation in Developing Countries (SAREC).