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PROTA’s strategy for the period 2009 – 2012 is substantially stipulated around the establishment, and management of its core product PROTA4U, a dynamic and interactive web-based bilingual system providing comprehensive information on 7,000 – 8000 useful plants of tropical Africa. PROTA4U will encompass most of the social media based technologies including wikis, RSS aggregations and feeds, and discussion forums, and will totally change the way scientific information is collected, validated, published and shared. The implementation of the strategic plan involves four steps (also designated as principles) as illustrated in Figure 1.
In the first step the interactive system, PROTA4U, will be developed and managed using efficient and faster user-friendly, and demand-driven approaches. The development of PROTA4U is fully in line with PROTA’s fundamental 3-step approach of knowledge synthesis, knowledge dissemination and knowledge utilization established since the inception of the initiative in 2000 and which remains as valid today.
So far the knowledge synthesis has reached about 25% with the freely accessible web database at www.prota.org contains about 1,200 review articles on slightly over 2,000 species, and the information is also available in 6 handbook volumes with accompanying CDs. The commodity groups addressed so far are Cereals and pulses, Vegetables, Dyes and tannins, Timbers Part 1, Medicinal plants Part 1, and Vegetable oils. We still have 10 commodity groups to go (e.g. Carbohydrates, Forages, Fruits, Ornamentals, Spices and condiments, etc.). In the knowledge dissemination part, conclusions and recommendations are made (based on the knowledge synthesis) regarding promising species, development gaps, research gaps, thesis subjects, conservation needs and policy measures. This takes place through a stakeholder consultation process, which has been completed for 5 of the 6 commodity groups and resulted in 5 concise booklets which are distributed on a large scale among the stakeholders in tropical Africa. In the knowledge utilization part promising species are being tried out in pilot projects in close cooperation with local grassroots organizations. So far 8 pilot projects (6 on vegetables, 2 on dyes and tannins) have been completed with overall positive results, and one of them (on dye sorghum in Benin) is presently being scaled up to answer a number of socio-economic and agronomic questions.
The second step consists in embedding PROTA4U and its long-term operation and usefulness in Africa by:
- establishing PROTA-Africa as an International Non-governmental Organization with Africa’s agenda, particularly to align and be able to work more closely with African partners and African agricultural development agendas at various level.
- strengthening the capacity of PROTA-Africa by enlarging its network of African cooperating institutions
- gradually transferring the management of PROTA4U, the editing and other functions presently performed by PROTA Network Office Europe to Africa.
In the third step, an evolvement step, the usefulness, outreach and impact of PROTA4U in Africa will be accelerated. Here, PROTA as a responsible programme will aggressively promote widespread and best use of its plant resources information by users namely policy-makers, education and research institutes, development oriented organizations, conservation bodies, the public and ultimate end-users.
The fourth step will promote innovations and seek for solutions for Africa’s sustainable development based on PROTA4U value. At this point PROTA intends to create meeting opportunities for interaction with key stakeholders. The common theme of such interactions will be engagement of anybody and everybody interested in the use of plant resources for improving livelihoods.
Each of the four principle areas will be continuously monitored. Progress and outcomes including experiences and lessons learned, will be continuously documented. PROTA will focus on up-scaling success and best practices, in order to achieve its vision, of seeing ‘’people in Africa making best utilization and conservation choices for improved livelihoods and sustainable management of plant resources’’.
Figure 1. Summary of PROTA’s strategic plan. Detailed explanations and comments on the figure available from: Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. 2009. Keeping Africa Informed. PROTA Strategy (2009-2010), Nairobi, Kenya. Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. 38pp.
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Strategy
