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• Mandate: MASHAV, Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation, representing the State of Israel and its people, shares the global responsibility of achieving sustainable development and social equity through empowering and equipping communities in the developing world with the tools and skills to overcome poverty and obstacles to development, enabling them to elicit sustainable change and transformation within their own societies.

• Main activities: MASHAV's programming is exclusively based on technical assistance and the transferring of accumulated Israeli know-how, technologies, and expertise through consultancies, capacity building and training activities both in Israel and in partner countries.

• Competencies: In line with global efforts to achieve universal food security, MASHAV provides capacity building, training, technical support and consultation in the areas of agriculture, irrigation/water management, nutrition and health, fruit/vegetable cultivation, animal husbandry and livestock production, apiculture, aquaculture, environmental issues and mitigation and adaptation to climate change, along with cross-cutting issues such as gender, entrepreneurship, emergency and disaster preparedness and youth empowerment. Moreover, MASHAV has years of experience in triangular/trilateral development cooperation in a variety of sectors.   

Overview

Over the past two years, MASHAV has continued its engagement in numerous triangular/trilateral partnerships in the food security and agricultural sectors with partner countries, such as Canada, Germany, Italy and Thailand, and multilateral institutions, including FAO, IFAD, UNIDO, UNWOMEN, and WFP among others.  The modality of cooperation varies depending upon the collaboration and the actors involved. Cooperation is either established in the form of project-type interventions in common target countries or through joint facilitation of technical cooperation activities and expert dispatches involving short-term training, workshops/seminars, conferences, exchange visits and professional study tours.

Within the context of a project-based collaboration, MASHAV contributes in the provision of personnel training and capacity building (train-the-trainer approach), technology transfers, consultancy services, establishment of agricultural demonstration plots, irrigation systems, and centers of excellence in agriculture.

Professional training courses and capacity building activities within or outside the framework of a project are either conducted in the country of intervention and/or in the other partner countries.

Project-type intervention

As an example of a project-based collaboration, MASHAV, Italy and Senegal have engaged in triangular cooperation in the area of agriculture since 2012 as a means to support Senegal's national development plans to increase food security and promote rural development through innovative and sustainable agricultural systems. The project, known as TIPA (Technology Innovation, Poverty Alleviation), is based on the African Market Garden approach (a holistic horticultural production system for smallholder farmers built on low-pressure drip irrigation and a crop management package) and is focused on increasing crop productivity and diversity, efficient utilization of water resources, soil preservation and income generation among smallholder farmers with an emphasis on gender mainstreaming.

The project's activities involve the equipping of smallholder farmers (many of whom are women) with modern and innovative agricultural practices, support in the installation of and operation of micro-irrigation systems, establishment of demonstration farms and showcase sites, a training and R & D center for capacity building in agro-technical skills, agricultural entrepreneurship and women's economic empowerment.

Technical Cooperation

Collaboration with Thailand’s International Cooperation Agency (TICA), however, is based exclusively on technical cooperation in the form of providing joint regional training activities in the field of agriculture for Thailand's neighboring countries, such as Lao PDR, Cambodia and Myanmar among others. Short-term training and professional courses are jointly conducted in Israel and Thailand in the areas of vegetable production, water management and irrigation and post-harvest handling for relevant stakeholders and actors (government officials, professionals, technicians) from the aforementioned countries.

Collaboration with FAO

The partnership between MASHAV and FAO was forged in 2008 with the signing of an MOU in the area of development cooperation and capacity building activities and further reinforced by an MOU signed with the FAO Sub-regional Office for Eastern Africa in the area of training and capacity building in 2010. A subsequent MOU was signed between MASHAV and FAO headquarters at the end of 2014 in joint technical cooperation. Over the years, MASHAV and the FAO have collaborated in the facilitation of various courses and consultancies in developing countries in the areas of family farming, dairy farms, aquaculture, food safety and treatment of pesticide residues.  In 2013, a joint course was held on the subject of dairy farming for participants from East African countries, while in 2014, MASHAV in collaboration with FAO facilitated a course in Post-Harvest Handling for Palestinians at the Volcani Center for Agricultural Research in Israel. 

Project-type triangular cooperation between MASHAV and FAO is currently being pursued. The scope of the collaboration will involve the provision of tailor-made and standard MASHAV training courses for FAO project beneficiaries, and the fielding of short-term experts to FAO projects in Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in the fields of agribusiness, aquaculture, dairy production, and irrigation.

Knowledge Dissemination (conferences, meetings, publications):

MASHAV organizes and participates in a variety of conferences and high-level meetings on the topics of food security, climate change, urbanization, rural and urban development, renewable energy, and other environmental issues. Moreover, MASHAV publishes articles and written material on the aforementioned issues in various fora.  Over the past two years, MASHAV has engaged in numerous activities on a national and international level.

MASHAV contributed a written piece to Deep Roots, a co-publication of FAO and Tudor Rose dedicated to the 2014 International Year of Family Farming. MASHAV's article, entitled "Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Senegal," is based upon MASHAV's ongoing work in Senegal.

Israel also submitted a resolution on Agricultural Technology for Sustainable Development, which was ratified by the UN General Assembly in 2015. The resolution outlines the impact of the adoption of agricultural technologies on the greater achievement of food security and nutrition, poverty eradication, women's empowerment and ensuring environmental sustainability.

Furthermore, representatives of MASHAV and the State of Israel also participated in the COP21 UN Summit as well as organized a side event on the topic of "Renewable Energies," where eight Israeli companies presented their innovative technologies in renewable energy and climate change mitigation. 

In 2015, Israel hosted Agritech, the 19th International Agricultural Technology Exhibition, which is one of the world's most important exhibitions in the field of agricultural technologies. The Head of MASHAV participated in a panel of experts on the "Implementation of New Technologies in Developing Countries." Against the backdrop of the exhibition, MASHAV also hosted a side event on "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Global Food Security Development," where high-level representatives and government officials from around the world were in attendance. Among the event's distinguished speakers were the Minister for Food and Agriculture of Ghana, Minister of Agriculture of Paraguay and the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food.  

In addition, MASHAV took part in the 5^th International Conference on Arid Regions, Deserts and Desertification at Ben Gurion University in Israel where MASHAV's Director of Policy Planning and International Relations Departed chaired the panel on "Drip Irrigation Application."

Currently, MASHAV is in the planning stages of organizing a High-Level Ministerial Conference on "Innovation in Agricultural Approaches and Technologies." 

• Legal status, in particular with the Government: Department within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel
• Government arrangements: Israel's official foreign aid and development agency

• Potential modalities:
  • Pursuit and establishment of triangular cooperation in the form of project-based collaboration, capacity building, trainings or technical-based cooperation.

• Potential activities:
  • MASHAV's standard or tailor-made training courses in Israel
  • "On-the-Spot" training and capacity building activities in partner countries
  • Consultancies
  • Expert dispatches
  • Establishment of agricultural demonstration plots and centers of excellence
  • Collaboration in the organization and facilitation of relevant conferences and high-level meetings

Ambassador Gil Haskel, HEAD of MASHAV

Tel: 972-2-530-3220

Shuli Kurzon van Gelder

Director, Planning, Evaluation and Partnerships

MASHAV, Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation

Email: [email protected]

Tel. +972-2-5303070