Call for Proposal

RUFORUM Community Action Research Programme

Call for Proposals, October 2018

for

Angola, Botswana, eSwatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia

The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation is implementing an eight year programme “Transforming African Agricultural Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s growth and development (TAGDev)”. The TAGDev Programme seeks to transform African agricultural universities and their graduates to better respond to developmental challenges through enhanced application of science, technology, business and innovation for rural agricultural transformation.

This is to announce the 2019/2020 Call for proposals for the Community Action Research Programme (CARP+). The CARP program aims to encourage universities to develop and invest in more comprehensive and sustained action research into a particular geographical area or in a selected commodity along the full value chain. The CARP+ is defined by inclusion of the TVET as part of the CARP engagement that has hitherto not been a focus in earlier approved CARP Projects. This CARP⁺ Call thus seeks to support projects that innovatively enhance university-led action research and impact by engaging and working with technical/ vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. All successful proposals must include at least one TVET institution as a partner, and demonstrate how the project will respond to TVET needs.

This specific Call seeks to extend university activities to work more closely with rural communities through multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional partnerships involving key stakeholders such as research, extension and development agencies, policy-makers, the private sector and TVET institutions as a must. The Call will support proposals focusing on crops and livestock sector value chains of strategic importance in Kenya and Uganda and other African countries that provide opportunity for sustainably moving a significant number of smallholder farmers out of poverty and food insecurity.   

This CARP+ 2019/2020 call is operating under the Window Two of the TAGDev Project as part of scaling out the CARP+ project initiative beyond Egerton University and Gulu University. For this call applicants are eligible to receive funding up to the tune of US$300,000 only for a period of 3-4 years.

Potential applicants are invited to review the detailed guidelines for the Call which may be Downloaded Here

Important dates for the Call are as below:

1. Deadline for full proposals submission to RUFORUM Secretariat by 15^th January, 2019 (23:59 HRS EAT)
2. Compliance and External Reviews by  March 15, 2019
3. Technical Committee meeting to select and Award the grant 25^th June, 2019
4. Communication to PIs of shortlisted proposals by 5^th July 2019
5. Submission of revised proposals 20^th July, 2019
6. Grant Agreements signed by 30^th July, 2019
7. Projects commence on 1^st August, 2019

For more information please email MCF@RUFORUM unit. Email: mcf@ruforum.org