Presented by Rudolphus De By (ITC) at the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting 2009: Mapping Our Future. March 31 - April 4, 2009, ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya

1. AgCommons Criteria CSI Annual meeting
Needs for the CfP
Proposal instructions should not be restrictive

Should be clear on parameter boundaries (size; duration; theme:

fish, livestock included?)
Should be clear on overall programme direction, targeted

community, architecture so that project fit can be demonstrated
against these.
What is the big programme puzzle, and what will constitute a

decent of part of it.
General
Feasibility

Clear and concrete definition of the problem or the opportunity

targeted with translation into deliverables
Gender sensitivity

Projects should have their own M&E, and produce results that

feed properly into overall programme M&E
Clear definition of target stakeholders, and their information

needs
Specific
Must have “provable” expected impact on the farmer, directly or

indirectly
Strong social science inclusion on technology adoption, especially

for (project extension) proposals where local stakeholders have not
been reached yet;
Potential for social adoption
Spatial enablement/empowerment makes a sensible, useful and

compelling case
Portfolio of project should display a wide spectrum:

o Geographic scales
o Temporal scales
o Risk levels
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2. o Innovation levels
o Range of stakeholders with different infrastructure
Emphasis on the farmer group, not yet on the farmer.

Crop-centric proposals only if spill over of results is expected to

other crops
Demonstrate scalability and reproducability

Sustainability

o Economically (beyond budget period)
o Societally embeddable
o Environmental

This needs to be prioritized.
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