British parliamentarians to visit RIU projects in Kenya
10 September 2010

An influential group of British members of parliament are to visit four RIU projects in Kenya next week. The four MPs and one member of the House of Lords are visiting on a trip organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development.

The delegation consist of:

• Heidi Alexander (Labour)
• Lord Cameron of Dillington (Crossbencher)
• Chris Kelly (Conservative)
• Kerry McCarthy (Labour)
• Craig Whittaker (Conservative)

Ian Maudlin, Director of RIU said:

"We are delighted that this delegation from the British Parliament has decided to visit programmes from the RIU portfolio. The projects are relatively recent investments for RIU, and all show great potential for impact and scaling up.

RIU has 45 experiments underway, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, and the MPs could have visited any of them to learn about the challenges and opportunities of getting research into use. As it is they are seeing programmes which address the fundamental issue of the need for parliamentary support for agriculture, information and farm inputs based on research findings.

The first project they will visit is working to improve agricultural policy development and implementation within African parliaments. They are also be meeting the team behind Shujaaz,an innovative multi-media approach to disseminating information to young people which in just 6 months has just produced its five millionth comic. The MPs will then travel to western Kenya to see FIPS-Africa in action. FIPS addresses the issue of making improved seeds, fertilisers and other farm inputs available at the farm-gate in small packs sizes poor farmers can afford. Finally, they are meeting FARM-Africa which is being supported by RIU to establish a franchise-based model for delivering inputs to fish farmers in western Kenya.

These projects will enable the MPs to see how RIU works in a targeted but flexible manner, brokering partnerships and alliances as well as providing investment to overcome barriers to enabling innovation. They will see too how the funding process we employed has supported creative and collaborative working between RIU projects rather than bureaucratic processes or competition."