With a view to accelerating the implementation of the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) in Chad, stakeholders and partners are being trained in innovative approaches and mechanisms for the production and dissemination of agricultural technologies.

More than 50 people from the various provinces in which the FSRP is being implemented in Chad have been trained in techniques for setting up innovation platforms. This training, provided with the support of CORAF, was led by the Laboratoire de Recherche sur l’Innovation pour le Développement Agricole (LRIDA) at the University of Parakou in Benin.

FSRP Tchad focuses its activities on the priority value chains of maize, wheat, and sesame. Through the innovation platform mechanism, the aim is to help ensure the successful transfer of agricultural technologies and innovations.

Through discussions and experiences sharing, participants learned that innovation platforms are a tool for dialogue between the various actors in the value chain to collectively identify challenges and find opportunities to improve production and marketing through the adoption of the best technologies and innovations. The innovation platforms bring together research structures, producers’ organizations, technical advisory and agricultural extension services, NGOs and civil society.

Through practical exercises, trainers and learners have diagnosed problems, explored opportunities and sought solutions to challenges. This is the approach promoted by innovation platforms to integrate rural producers into value chains in West Africa. By coming together in this way, social and economic actors try to resolve the constraints they face. In doing so, they build new synergies. Through a collaborative interrelationship, agricultural producers, processors, buyers, transporters, researchers, extension workers, etc. learn from each other, understand each other better and develop win-win exchanges.