At country level, good progress has been made in the second quarter of 2020: project teams have been established and meetings have been organized in Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Cambodia and Eritrea. Letters of agreement are being signed in support of the assessment of agricultural innovation systems in these four countries, the process will start during the third quarter of 2020. A five-day training programme has been designed to capacitate the national assessment team. The training will be delivered remotely and supported by a national facilitator. In Senegal, Colombia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Malawi, country project managers have been recruited and work plans are being developed. 

In June and July 2020, a series of virtual training sessions were designed and implemented, targeting the country project managers, coordinators and members of the country team. The training pursued two main learning outcomes: 

a) improved understanding of the project and ability to effectively manage the country component of the project; 

b) shared knowledge and understanding of key concepts and approaches (e.g. agricultural innovation, agricultural innovation systems, capacity development, TAP Common Framework, etc.). 

Four virtual training sessions were organized as follows:

• Session 1. Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) through a project-based approach (18 June 2020)
• Session 2. Identifying and strengthening organizations that provide Innovation Support Services (30 June 2020)
• Session 3. Strengthening capacities at policy level (16 July 2020)
• Session 4. Introduction to AIS assessment (29 July 2020)

At regional level, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) contracted the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) to develop a common methodology for a Joint Rapid Appraisal (JRA)  by Regional Research and Extension Organizations (RREOs) in Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The purpose of the appraisal is to better understand the regional landscape for strengthening AIS, and identify entry points for integrating and scaling use of TAP Common Framework and its tools and approaches for AIS capacity development. The methodology was developed in close consultation with RREOs and the JRA will be carried out starting from the first week of August. FAO is arranging to sign Letters of Agreements (LoAs) with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Latin American Rural Extension Services Network (RELASER), the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) and he Asia-Pacific Islands Rural Advisory Services Network (APIRAS) for the conduct of the appraisal.

A virtual two-day orientation training was held on 28 July and 29 July 2020, on the JRA methodology to the RREOs focal points as well as to regional experts who will carry out the appraisal. 

Update: The project "Developing Capacities in Agricultural Innovation Systems: Scaling Up The Tropical Agriculture Platform Framework" is now called in short "TAP-AIS". Read more about the TAP-AIS project here.