National Innovation Coalition

RIU Zambia works with an advisory group called the National Innovation Coalition (NIC) which has two roles:

• To overseeing the progress against the delivery plan.
• To help to use our learning from the programme to influence national or regional strategies and policies.

The National Innovation Coalition (NIC) was launched in December 2008. Since then the NIC has evolved to have a flexible membership but with a focus on interaction between partners, sharing experiences and considering constraints and opportunities. The patron of the NIC is the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MACO), while the chair of the NIC is the representative of the Cotton Association of Zambia (CAZ).

In June 2010 the NIC meet with local stakeholders to share progress made in implementing RIU Zambia programmes and identify key policy related issues for discussion and recommendation.

The main outcome of the meeting was that it identified the emerging successes in rice value addition and draft animals voucher system as requiring leveraging for policy support

Capacity Building

Date	9 August 2010
Event	Word Bank's Crowd Sourcing/Feeding workshop
Capacity building activity	Workshop to learn about new ICT based tool for gathering and disseminating information during a crisis or for early warning in agriculture and natural resources or otherwise
RIU capacity developed	skill acquired in use of Crowd-sourcing/feeding tools for early warning
More information	Contact Victor Makasa, Country coordinator

Date	August 2010
Event Capacity building activity	COMACO performance audit presentation
RIU capacity developed	Learned about the general performance of COMACO and recommendations made by evaluators