PROJECT ASSESSMENTS - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 125

E) Tangible outputs, dissemination and impact
Can you describe for the (max. 10) key outputs of your project:
The project resulted in a policy-brief which was presented to a group of member of
parliament, a KARI technical bulletin to be used by the extension service, 5 papers
published and submitted to regional and international scientific journals and 7
presentations at national and international conferences.
F) Lessons learned
What lessons have you learned from science, policy-oriented and capacity building
activities that could improve:
This is an example of a project which is formulated entirely by the research and
policymakers in Kenya. Wageningen UR was hired for its expertise and experience
in natural resources management. Compared to most other projects influence of
Wageningen UR research staff on the research planning and process was limited.
This has resulted in some problems concerning the quality of the research process,
but the high level of ownership guaranteed a wide dissemination and use of the
project results. Researchers and policymakers evaluated the North-South cooperation
in the project in general very positively.
The technical orientation of the majority of the KARI staff and management,
limited the impact of the results at policy levels. In first instance KARI refused to
issue an extension bulletin since no concrete potential technical solutions were
presented for the semi-arid lands.
The project builds upon a long-standing relationship between KARI and
Wageningen UR (see Box 2 in Roetter and Van Keulen, this volume). This facilitated a
smooth implementation of the project at implementation and management level.
A number of joint follow-up projects were initiated as a result of this project.