The working groups are the heart and soul of SNRD Africa, bringing professionals from GIZ-supported projects and experts of the respective GIZ sector departments together. They organise knowledge management, provide training on best practices and develop new approaches based on mutual exchange and peer learning. Working groups choose their tandem partners in the sector department (FMB) and have their own speakers, annual work plans and physical meetings. We recommend for each SNRD member to participate in one working group!
Food Security, Nutrition and Resilience
This working group aims at good nutritional status, which is both an outcome and a key enabler of sustainable development. All forms of malnutrition, whether insufficient calorie intake, micronutrient deficiencies or overweight, impact not only on the health, but also on the economic performance – of individuals as well as of entire nations (…)
Policy Processes for Agriculture and Rural Development
This working group shares and promotes best practices and lessons learned from policy advisory services for agricultural public and private sector partners, rural development and food security policies.
Agribusiness and Inclusive Value Chain Development
This working group promotes market-oriented agricultural development through the creation of viable agribusiness ventures that are embedded in inclusive and sustainable value chains
Climate Change, Livelihoods and Natural Resources Management
This working group promotes the improvement of livelihoods while conserving natural resources in the context of climate change. Members believe that well governed and responsible management of natural resources are the basis for sustainable development in rural areas.
CoPs offer an open and flexible format to work on matters that cut across thematic areas, going beyond the regular span of SNRD activity. At this point, there are two active CoPs. Please let us know if you would like to join one of them.
Rural Employment
This community of practice aims to attract thematic GIZ experts and external consultants to work on job creation for youngsters in rural areas in Africa.
Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture
This community of practice is for everyone working in the area of information and communications technologies for agriculture (ICT4Ag) in developing countries. Digital native or not, (…)
Agriculture Technical Vocational Education and Training
This CoP is a forum for everyone working on ATVET-related projects in developing countries as well as for the experts from the sector departments dealing with subjects linked to ATVET within Germany (…)
Contract Farming
The launch of the new virtual Community of Practice (vCoP) on contract farming (CF) is a further step in the GIZ’s engagement to promote CF around the world. Recognising the recently risen prominence of contract farming in practical approaches and debates related to inclusive business, the GIZ’s Sector Project Agricultural Policy and Food Security published the Contract Farming Handbook …
Updates
Climate Change Adaptation Community and Climate Risk CoP on IDA
GIZ is phasing in their new integrated digital applications platform IDA
Proceedings of the 2017 SNRD Africa Conference in Pretoria
The SNRD Africa conference beginning of May was a lively, interactive event with about 150 participants from all over Africa and Germany. Find the final report.
The Most Pressing Issue in Rural Development – Hans Schöneberger
Hans Schöneberger thinks that all progress achieved in rural development will be eaten up by population growth. The issue put massive pressure on natural resources and was the source for substantial conflict. (...)
The Benefits of Virtual Collaboration
SNRD Africa’s workflow utilises modern digital tools. Each working group and community of practice has access to an internal community platform. Based on Microsoft Sharepoint technology, these virtual communities with their knowledge sharing and exchanging on management practice have become essential to active cooperation, networking and partnership.
Virtual collaboration via the community platforms adds value:
To exchange with members on current topics in real time, e.g. in webinars and online meetings, online discussions, blogs and fora
- Options to share news, updates, announcements and articles among members
- A document management system: upload and administer documents and information, share documents, information and links with other members
- To work jointly on documents and presentations (via MS Office online) in your working group or CoP
- A better knowledge management through wiki functions
- To organise, prepare and document your events and meetings
- A calendar function synchronised with Microsoft Outlook and push-messages for updates – never again miss a webinar organised by your working group
- The option to administer tasks and duties and your working group, to organise polls and surveys among members
- Option to share links to external communities, institutions and websites
- The SNRD newsletter
- User profiles of our members for better networking