Accelerating Climate Adaptation via Meso-level Integration (ACAMI)
Accelerating Climate Adaptation via Meso-level Integration (ACAMI)
Background
Together with ACDI and ASU, ARIN will be the part of the ACAMI core project team and lead the research activities and engagements in East Africa (Kenya).
More specifically ARIN will be responsible for the following tasks:
- Participation in all scheduled and ad hoc research team meetings (virtually and as feasible, in person in Cape Town).
- Contribution to the refinement of the research design, research instruments and approach.
- Contribution to the literature review, especially provide guidance on grey literature.
- Implementation of project activities in East Africa:
Activity 1. Identification, recruitment, consultation with regional meso-level organizations.
Mapping of meso-level organisations contributing to climate adaptation for agriculture (CAA) projects will involve document reviews to identify relevant CAA projects and understand there levels they are in the implementation and services and goods that are being generated. This will help in comprehensive mapping of MLOs and minimise chances of focusing on one category of MLOs but across value chains, support services etc. in addition, we will search CAAs and MLOs in relevant databases and analysis of their relevance to the objectives of the study. ARIN will review the mapped MLOs and undertake preliminary engagement to get deeper understanding of their institutional mandate, vision and their relevant. ARIN will then seek their contributions based on their interest and potential contributions at sharing data and tools and participate in the research activities such as focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, policy and validation workshops. ARIN will not only engagement at the validation but also engage them in the uptake of the research findings and learning towards as well as building focused community of practice to sustain learning beyond the project period.
ARIN will develop database of the relevant organisations for future reference and easy access. This will involve building of a vibrant database for the engaged organisations and those who were identified for potential future engagement but potential for community of practice and learning. The database of MLOs will also be made accessible by relevant organisation and easy for potential MLOs to share and update their contributions to CAA in Kenya and the EAC.
The list of mapped MLOs and data centre of MLOs will make key reference for the drafting of a situational analysis report for MLOs in CAA in Kenya and the east African region. The situational analysis will be enriched by the outputs of Activity 2, 3 and 4 to provide the actual nature of MLOs in CAA in Kenya and the eastern African region.
Timelines: 4 months
Activity 2: Scheduling and carrying out of in-depth interviews and dissemination of a short survey with identified MLOs (minimum 20).
The indepth interviews will be undertake face-to-face and online, whichever is convenient for the targeted interviews. ARIN will attempt as much as possible to undertake face-to-face interviews for the interviews who are preferring and willing. This provides opportunity to not only probe further response to the questions but also build relations for further engagement at community of practice and learning. The selection of the interviews will be guided by the sector, services they provide and contribution to adaptation solutions
A comprehensive interview tool will be co-developed with the MLOs and ACAMI core team to ensure key aspects that relevant but not existing in ongoing CAA solutions in the region are captured and pursued during the interviews. The data collection tool will be guided by the existing assessment tools relevant to CAA, which will be reviewed and updated based on the preliminary engagement with the mapped MLOs. The tool will be validated to ensure relevant metrics are generated to guide the interviews and relevant outputs. The interview tool will be adopted for face-to-face interviews, virtual interviews, and online surveys.
ARIN will use snowballing to identify other relevant MLOs during the in-depth interviews as well as enrich the outputs in the first activity. The list of MLOs and data centre will be updated on regular basis based on the emerging MLOs, actions and their influence in CAA projects in the eastern Africa region.
ARIN will use this interview to build relations and facilitate opportunities for learning and building of a community of practice among the MLOs in the east African region. ARIN will target MLOs with regional influence to strengthen community of practice with regional focus but also bring on board MLOs at national and local level.
Timelines: 4 months
Activity 3: Organisation and carrying out of follow up workshop/ Focus groups (2-3 focus groups with 4-5 MLOs in each region, or potentially 1 larger workshop that would bring all of them together (~15 total).
ARIN will identify MLOs who will participate in the focus group discussions and a workshop where necessary, guided by the outputs of Activity 1 & 2. ARIN will identify targeted MLOs for focused group discussion/ workshop by the mapped and analysed MLOs, where their contributions or potential contributions, interests, or level of stake they have in research, planning, designing, financing, and deploying CAA in Kenya and potentially the east African region is certain or known. At least 3-4 focus group discussions bring together at least 4-5 representatives county, national and regional level will be held for MLOs in 1) ministry departments and agencies; 2) private sector; 3) associations and federations; 4) academia and 5) MLOs associated with international organisations. These focus group discussions will help provide relevant MLOs playing different roles in CAA and across value chains to share targeted data, information, and insights on their level of contribution to CAA. These series of focus group discussion will form firm foundation for selection of key participants for multi-sector or specialised MLOs to interacted and help ARIN to understand how they manage trade-offs and synergies in influencing CAA in east Africa. The key guiding questions for the focused group discussions will be synthesised from the outputs of Activity 1 and 2. The preliminary list of appropriate questions will be synthesised to narrow down to relevant questions for focus group discussion to help unpack emerging issues in the document analysis and interviews.
At least 2 validation workshops will be held to bring together MLOs at sub-national and national and regional level. The participants and key guiding agenda will be co-produced after the series of focus group discussions. The participants of the validation workshops and focus group discussions will be integrated into community of proactive for MLOs in CAA. The workshops will be used to co-develop a framework for community of practice and initiate learning.
This is the stage where the community of practice for MLOs in CAA will be strengthened and launched to bring together and consolidate MLOs to be engaged further to respond to or share more information needed to help understand the emerging knowledge gaps in Activity 1, 2 and 3. The composition of the community of practice will integrate the MLOs domiciled in Kenya but also play significant roles in CAA across the east Africa.
Timelines: 3 months
Activity 4: Organisation and carrying out of interviews with additional stakeholders (private sector, etc)
ARIN will use engagement and outputs Activity 1,2, and 3 to identify the gaps and opportunities to fill through additional interviews. The next series of interviews will focus on addressing targeted knowledge gaps and opportunity for influence using preliminary outputs and learning. ARIN will use the community of practice to sustain engagement and learning among MLOs. That present an opportunity for addressing trade-offs and synergies emerging in the role of MLOs in CAA in the region. This will build on development of at least 3 case studies of MLOs in CAA at at sub-national, national and regional level.
Timelines: 6 months