On the 25th of February 2022, there was a meeting about how to build a platform for Research and Innovation Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.

Dr. Loannis Dimitriou started by talking about the challenges for this collaboration, such as no one knowing who is doing what or when, the fact that there are limited tools, that best practices are not shared,or not systematically managed, and that there are not a lot of resources.

She also talked about the objectives of this work like how to improve quality, how to map the project, and how to make new instruments for data analysis.

“We should make countries work together and promote more maintenance. Joining forces is important for the future. Finding the right information is very difficult. We hope in the future we will have advanced tools.”

The LEAP4FNSSA project was mandated to establish a sustainable structure or platform for the efficient and coherent implementation of the EU-AU research and innovation partnership as described in the FNSSA roadmap

Dr. Irene went on about the criteria of the platform, that it should be bi-continental, uniting Africa and Europe for the benefit of both continents, and dealing with common priorities. It also should be operational and open to all institutions, public and private.

Dr. Irene also talked about the international research consortium (IRC): a group of committed institutions that agree to work for the mid- to long-term toward a commonly defined goal. So who can join the IRC? Every institution that is willing to contribute to the FNSSA,

What are the benefits of joining the IRC? Becoming a member of the IRC may help to increase the impact of your initiative, optimize the utilization of your work and results, and gain greater recognition and visibility for your contribution to the success of the EU-AU platform supported by the highest authorities.

Lastly, eight months from now, in September 2022, there’s going to be the final write-shop and the launch of the AU-EU platform IRC.