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Workshop held jointly with the World Bank-hosted SSATP.

Africa College held a 3-day workshop jointly with the World Bank-hosted Sub Saharan Africa Transport Policy (SSATP) Programme at IITA in Nigeria

Africa College held a 3-day workshop jointly with the World Bank-hosted Sub Saharan Africa Transport Policy (SSATP) Programme for leading experts and key stakeholders at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria on 5-7th October, 2010. The workshop aimed to promote the establishment of an interactive dialogue between a range of stakeholders on food security, agriculture and rural transport. The dialogue focused around the following themes:

? The role of rural transport and other possibly complementary factors in improving smallholder access to markets;
? The impact of increased market access on market-level food availability and prices and on the household food security of market purchasers (rural as well as urban);

The workshop promoted an evidence-led, interactive dialogue between the agriculture and transport sectors in Africa and identified a set of priorities, concrete actions and partnership opportunities to develop this interaction. The priority actions identified included:

? Building understanding and consensus on the state of knowledge and available evidence on solutions from different sector to improve access, and how they may support or substitute for one another
? Developing contributions to increase the evidence and knowledge base for the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) Pillar 2 activities on rural infrastructure;
? Identifying opportunities to develop collaborative research projects such as the recent call by the European Commission 7th Research Framework Programme for proposals on reducing post-harvest losses for increased food security; and
? Identifying opportunities to influence the development of evidence-based policy and practice to improve the interaction between agriculture and transport.

29th November 2010