Starting the pilot projects implemented in Niger and Senegal in 2016 within the context of the UN Decade of Family Farming, ROPPA (Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, Network of Peasant Organizations and Agricultural Producers in West Africa) and WAW are working together to strengthen the capacities of national family farmers’ platforms to consolidate and develop their own observatory in the eight countries selected by ROPPA: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

Each observatory aims to be both a source of information and a tool controlled by each national platform to promote family farming in terms of poverty alleviation and hunger reduction, through the development of investment strategies adapted to the diversity of family farms. WAW analytical tools will be used to strengthen the national platforms and, thanks to harmonized and common indicators, comparability within and between countries will be possible. This will allow to consolidate information at regional level where ROPPA observatory has been settled as a regional system of observation and monitoring.

This cooperation between WAW and ROPPA aims at making available tools and knowledge to improve national platforms performance, to spread knowledge on family farming and to support institutions and governments in policy design and investment planning to support the development of family farms as part of the Global Framework for Action (http://www.fao.org/3/ca4672en/ca4672en.pdf) of the UN Decade of Family Farming.