Key lessons NICHE-KEN-212 Water management and livestock project Pwani University

By Prof Patterson, Dean, School of Agricultural Sciences and Agribusiness, Pwani University (click here for the Pwani University website) and project director, NICHE-KEN-212

THE ROAD TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

In my view, interventions or innovations that can self-renew over time and value chain developments taking a holistic approach for the improvement of the institution, community, stakeholders and the country at large is the way to sustainable development. The Nuffic NICHE-project has contributed to this through human and inventory capacity building, the introduction of blended learning, value chain management, experimentation of interventions at the model and experimental farms and dissemination of results.

This was my first-time experience of a project that did not follow the norm of a project proposal. In this approach, the requesting organisation had to come up with outcomes independently of the lead provider, who had to come up with outputs. On the fusion of outputs and outcomes, a project was born.

NO RED TAPE

Not working with a university from the Netherlands reduced the administrative red tape associated with universities.  Thanks to Q-Point for having no red tape!

EYE-OPENER

The structured visit to the Netherlands was an eye-opener and excellent exposure for benchmarking purposes. It made us drop embryo transfer as a breeding technique for cows in favour of artificial insemination and management, particularly nutrition.