COMMUNICATION STRATEGY AND PROJECT STAKEHOLDERS

Scaling-up and communications:

New thinking on scaling-up and communicating crop post-harvest research findings that seek to meet people’s requirements, emphasises pluralism, inclusion and empowerment. Such developments take place within the context of wider policy shifts, which focus on reducing the vulnerability of individuals and poorer sections of society (e.g. Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper), and of new approaches which recognise the diversity of people’s livelihoods and the constraining and/or facilitating role of micro and macro-scale factors. Intermediate users of research findings (e.g. policy actors, service providers, private sector suppliers, development agencies) and their associated institutional settings, typically play a crucial role in the fit of research to end-users needs and in facilitating the uptake of its findings by end-users.

To ensure the project’s relevance and optimise the uptake of its findings, the project team have sought and actively continue to seek the involvement of diverse stakeholders. Farmers themselves, their associations and intermediate agencies originally identified and expressed the need for alternative, but safe and affordable, grain protectants. Village members constructed the ‘vihenge’ – traditional storage structures – and in some cases the warehouses, and worked with the project team in setting up the trials. Farmers will also carry out their own trials, using their criteria to measure success. Other stakeholders, including state and civil society service providers, NGO and Church development agencies, private sector suppliers, and policy actors, have been actively involved in the unfolding project processes.

To optimise the scaling-up process – the prompt, equitable and lasting distribution of quality benefits from the project to people over a wider geographical area – the project continues to develop its communication strategy. This involves the continued identification of potential stakeholders, the development of a framework to better contextualise their post-harvest/storage roles and provide for understanding of their respective functions and information systems, and the on-going selection and production of appropriate communication products and activities.

Project stakeholders:

Overall project stakeholders will be united by an interest in storage or post harvest issues that focus on poorer small-scale producers (and consumers) of grains in semi-arid areas. From the project perspective they may be differentiated either according to their role in its implementation (e.g. project partners; collaborating agencies, communities and farmers) or based on their potential in the post-project scaling-up process (e.g. intermediate and end-users of the research findings) when the outputs will hopefully be translated into the realisation of purpose. These groups are not mutually exclusive and both may be further sub-divided according to various typologies:

• Function (e.g. consumer, service provider, development implementer, input supplier, policy adviser, policy maker, researcher, trainer)
• Sector (e.g. state, voluntary sector - secular or religious, private sector)
• Level or sphere of operation (e.g. farm, village, ward, district, region, zone, national, international)
• Agent versus agency: individual agents, or actors, may have or represent different levels of authority or probity, from that of the impersonal organisational stakeholder.