Un-wrapping a 6 million dollar “Christmas Gift”: Sweden increases funding to the BecA-ILRI Hub for research towards food security

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Written on Tuesday, 21 January 2014 09:45

From 20 - 21 January 2014, members of the BecA-ILRI Hub team will be refining a strategy to deploy SEK 40 million (approximately USD 6 million) received from the Swedish government, late November 2013.

The team is looking critically at how best the supplemental funding  can be used to enhance research and capacity building activities in the BecA-Sweden partnership on food security and climate change.

The funding agreement was signed at the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi on 22 November 2013 by Swedish Ambassador to Kenya, HE Johan Borgstam and ILRI Director General, Jimmy Smith following a review of the BecA-Sweden partnership projects.

“The signing of this agreement is a testimony to the commitment the team has collectively demonstrated to deliver on existing agreements,” said BecA-ILRI Hub Director, Appolinaire Djikeng.

Gity Behravan, Senior Research Advisor/First Secretary: Regional Research Cooperation, Embassy of Sweden in Kenya, commended the progress of the partnership saying “Everyone has been very impressed with the research and capacity building collaborations the BecA-ILRI Hub has established with different national institutions through the BecA-Sweden partnership.”

“We are also very encouraged with the broader ‘south-south-north’ institutional cooperation that the Hub is now fostering. These are the partnerships 21st Century research needs in order to find solutions to food insecurity”, she said.

The supplemental funding will also support the strengthening of shared technology platforms (genomics, bioinformatics, nutrition analysis and diagnostics) established by the Hub and will contribute to the development of research capacity in selected regional National Agricultural Research institutions.

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