African Union – European Union Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FNSSA)

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

• the coordination of Research and Innovation Policies of AU and EU Members in the Working Group on FNSSA is improved;

• improved coordination of the portfolio of projects funded under the first priority on FNSSA of the African Union – European Union High-level Policy Dialogue across all funding instruments of the EU and the AU and its members, in particular the EU Research Framework Programme, Co-funding instruments, the DeSIRA programme and others.

Scope:

Proposals should:

• implement the AU-EU roadmap by strengthening the strategic functioning and capacities of the FNSSA Working Group. Develop a toolkit of measures and provide robust scientific support, as well as practical administrative help, to enable a better-structured organisation;

• operationalise the International Research Consortium (IRC) as a platform to implement the roadmap on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA) by improving the learning environment, including communication channels, to support multi stakeholder networks and to strengthen R&I coordination and funding also by the use of Financial Support to Third Parties as well as by the use of cascading funding;

• provide a platform for funders and seed funding to further develop and/or scale-up technical and social innovations created by a previous HLPD-FNSSA[1] projects. These projects must have been funded in support of the EU-AU FNSSA roadmap 2016-2026 and funded by one of the instruments of EU-AU R&I collaboration, they include African Union Research Grants, ERA-Nets (Leap-Agri, FOSC), Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and DeSira;

• complement other potential scale-up instruments of the EU Global Gateway Strategy such as the AU-EU Innovation Agenda and the EU International Partnerships such as DeSIRA+;

• promote start-ups and other innovative SMEs by providing a space for mentoring and accelerating innovative business concepts, including social innovation and upscaling in view of African or European food business entrepreneurs with special consideration of women, young entrepreneurs and the diaspora using cascading funding opportunities.

Proposals may involve financial support to third parties e.g. to academic researchers, start-ups, SMEs and other multidisciplinary actors, to, for instance, develop, test or validate approaches.

Proposals are encouraged to work together with the Joint Research Centre via the European Commission’s Knowledge Centre on Global Food and Nutrition Security to leverage its knowledge base on relevant topics and to expand the reach and dissemination of FNSSA activities.

[1] HLPD-FNSSA: EU-African Union High Level Policy Dialogue on Research and Innovation and its first priority on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.