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The PrAEctiCe project consortium convened for a Partners Meeting in Entebbe, Uganda, from the 26th to the 28th of September 2023, as the inaugural year of implementation concluded in October 2023. The purpose of the meeting was to assess the progress made in the first year of project activities and to plan for the upcoming year. Additionally, the consortium visited the Living Lab in Aquaculture and Hydroponics, Kajjansi.
The project partners in Uganda jointly organised the annual project meeting, which was led by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and opened by the project coordinator Prof. Jan Hoinkis from Hochschule Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA), the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), and Makerere University.
The main goal of the first day of the partners’ meeting was to evaluate the completion of scheduled activities, deliverables, and milestones planned for the first year. The meeting provided an opportunity to address the challenges faced and strategies and solutions required to meet the incomplete targets and those planned for the following year. The opening session was followed by a presentation of the progress of activity implementation by each partner’s representative, and the activities and deliverables planned for the second year were also presented.
As the project’s research focuses on Intellectual Property Management (IPM), it is crucial to manage it effectively throughout the project’s lifetime. Therefore, Steinbeis 2i GmbH (S2i) conducted a dedicated workshop on IPM on Day 2 of the gathering presented by Senior Project Manager Eduardo Herrmann. The workshop’s primary objective was to provide the partners with a comprehensive understanding of the current global practices and procedures in IPM and an overview of the expected Intellectual Property generated in the project and how it will be managed.
During working group discussions the specific user requirements necessary to develop the PrAEctiCe Decision Support Tool successfully was addressed. The unique perspectives of advisors and farmers were considered to establish the needs and parameters that would be useful in the app. One of the questions that arose was whether the advisors were private companies or individuals providing advice to farmers. Eduardo Herrmann stated: “No, the advisors are mostly publicly owned organisations fulfilling the advice services as part of their mandate,” was the general response in their group during a discussion. The general outcome was that the app could facilitate technology transfer and optimise existing farming systems.
Furthermore, the interface of the app will be beneficial for monitoring purposes, including farmers’ input of fields and market data, to evaluate the economic viability of their farming operations. The app will consider various types of information, such as disease control, nutritional values for animal and fish feed, practices to adapt to and mitigate weather changes, sources of financing, policies and controls related to standards and restrictions for advisors, and aspects of competition around a specific product.
During the in-person partners’ meetings, the partners get a chance to visit and appreciate the action-based research centres located in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. On the third day of the meeting, the partners visited the Living Lab for Aquaculture and Hydroponics situated at Kajjansi. The visit allowed the partners to familiarise themselves with Uganda’s agroecology and farming systems. They also got to assess the progress made in establishing the living lab. The visit included a tour of the Aquaculture Research and Development Centre (ARDC), part of Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organization’s National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI). NaFIRRI is responsible for fisheries and aquaculture and represents NARO in the PrAEctiCe project. During her presentation, Victoria Tibenda Namulawa, Aquaculture research scientist at NARO, stated: “We appreciate that aquaculture answers the global, continental and regional frameworks. We look at aquaculture as a vehicle for industrialisation, especially as far as agroecology.” During the visit, the partners discussed approaches for effectively co-creating knowledge and technologies at the living lab with farmers from different agro-ecologies and how to scale them across Uganda.
