Group 2 -Partners and their Roles - Bridget

Lead partners

Universities

The universities namely; Makerere University in Uganda, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, Africa University in Zimbabwe, and Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania will have the following roles and responsibilities:

1. Universities are the lead institutiuons for this initiative in each of the pilot countries. They will therefore be in charge of the oveall project management and implementation. They will be responsible for identifying the appropriate partners, designing the project together with their respective partners, oversee project implemenation as well as Monitoring and evalution.
2. They will jointly with their respective partners set up and manage a rural resource centre to gather, collate, process, package and disseminate information to the various ICT chanels.
3. They will be responsible for the research component which will also involve training a masters student in the the area of ICT in rural development. The training will also involve internship at the resource centre to provide practical experience to the student.

Collaborating Partners

The collaborating partners include National agricultural and environmental research institutes, media organisations, civil society organisations, telecommunication service providers and agro-meteorological departments. The agricultural and environmental research institutes will primarily be responsible for providing scientific information generated by their organisations and help in their interpretation and packaging for various ICTs and audiences. The media organisations (namely FM radio stations, television the press) and the telecommunication service provider (mobile phone providers)will primarily be responsible for dissemination of information and a channel for obtaining feedback. These will also be in charge of publicity and marketing of the initiative to potential clients as well as policy makers. The civil society organisations (NGOs and Farmer Organisations) will be responsible for mobilisation of community, validating and checking relevance of the information and obtaining feedback from the community. Agro-meteorology departments will primarily provide weather/climate related information to enable rural communities enhance their production and cope with the changing environment.

Associate partners

The associate partner include the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and the Association for Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). These will support the project through advocacy, lobbying and resource mobilisation.