General

- Contribute towards creating climate resilience community through asset building diversifying livelihoods and rehabilitating the degraded watersheds through community action.-The targeted woreda and micro catchments are characterized by rapid rate of land degradation which resulted in declining of productivity and exposure of the community to poverty and displacement. - Expected outcomes are: Improved soil fertility crop yield and household asset and access to food and water retention capacity decreased de forestation and increased forested area with better biodiversity and water in the watersheds. - Project beneficiaries are about 2750 persons in targeted two micro catchments of Begaiz and Abaya (women are 48%). The figure also includes about 200 governmen t workers in the woreda bureau of agriculture. - The implementing agency is EWNRA in partnership with the Embassy of Finland that finances the projects. Government stakeholders are Bureau of Agriculture Bureau of Trade and Bureau of Environmental Protectio n authority at Woreda level. - EWNRA has been selected due to its high expertise and successful implementation of past projects. Sustainability has been ensured in the previous partnerships and the recultivation of rehabilitated gullies and past degraded l ands demonstrates this.

General

The main campaign objective is to ensure more women, youth and men small -scale food producers currently in poverty have stronger voice in food and agriculture policy processes and rights to productive assets and market opportunities for sustainable and dignified lives. The campaign issues to be addressed include but not limited to: access to social protection, agriculture aid effectiveness, national food security policies, increase public and private investment in smallholder agriculture, land rights and national climate change adaptation and agriculture plans. The project will contribute to the Programme Implementation Plan (PIP) outcomes by catalysing increased quantity and quality of public and private investment in agriculture in order to secure, improve and sustain the productivity, resilience and well -being of women and other smallholder farmers, their households and communities in Ghana. It further aims to consolidate, leverage, and enhance the impact of commitments made by government and donors in support of smallholder agriculture in Ghana and beyond. The project will empower women and other smallholder producers' organization, civil society and media with skills to influence and challenge policies and practices that affect them. This will involve engaging in budget advocacy to increase allocation and spending on agriculture, tracking agriculture budgets, convening platforms for policy influencing and good agriculture governance, and building local, national, regional and global alliances to promote investments in agriculture targeting women and other smallholder farmers

General

Nicaragua recently returned to the VLIR-UOS list of partner countries -after a few years without project opportunities- because of its potential for academic cooperation and the interest of Flemish HEI to work with Nicaraguan HEI. VLIR-UOS supports interventions that empower higher education institutes in their role as drivers of change. All interventions frame within the VLIR-UOS Country Strategy for Nicaragua which fits in the national human development plan (PNDH), higher education priorities and the JSF. The strategy is translated in 3 domains: environment (climate change, effects on disease, agriculture, biodiversity, natural resources, link economy, link ecotourism&labels/entrepreneurship, waste management), territorial development (land transition, local development&governance, productive landscapes, agroforestry, spatial contexts, rurality, conflict, agricultural development, sustainable development, link public health/disease control) and society (inclusive governments, human rights, social&community development, education, local governance, migration, transitional justice, intercultural issues, land rights, gender&violence, youth&violence, link public health/disease control). Special attention should go to cross-cutting and supporting issues related to higher education and research (research strategy/thinking, problem based research and innovation, academic English, proposal writing, open library & access systems, gender mainstreaming and balances, intercultural diversity, multidisciplinary research). The programme will be a kind of exploratory phase aiming at motivating researchers to submit project proposals for TEAM and South Initiatives. At least a few projects should be able to take place.