African Union – European Union Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FNSSA)

Expected Outcome:Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:the coordination of Research and Innovation Policies of AU and EU Members in the Working Group on FNSSA is improved;improved coordination of the portfolio of projects funded under the first priority on FNSSA of the African Union – European Union High-level Policy Dialogue across all funding instruments of the EU and the AU and its members, in particular the EU Research Framework Programme, Co-funding instruments, the DeSIRA programme and others. Scope:Proposals should:implement the AU-EU roadmap by strengthening the strategic functioning and capacities of the FNSSA Working Group. Develop a toolkit of measures and provide robust scientific support, as well as practical administrative help, to enable a better-structured organisation;operationalise the International Research Consortium (IRC) as a platform to implement the roadmap on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA) by improving the learning environment, including communication channels, to support multi stakeholder networks and to strengthen R&I coordination and funding also by the use of Financial Support to Third Parties as well as by the use of cascading funding;provide a platform for funders and seed funding to further develop and/or scale-up technical and social innovations created by a previous HLPD-FNSSA[1] projects. These projects must have been funded in support of the EU-AU FNSSA roadmap 2016-2026 and funded by one of the instruments of EU-AU R&I collaboration, they include African Union Research Grants, ERA-Nets (Leap-Agri, FOSC), Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and DeSira;complement other potential scale-up instruments of the EU Global Gateway Strategy such as the AU-EU Innovation Agenda and the EU International Partnerships such as DeSIRA+;promote start-ups and other innovative SMEs by providing a space for mentoring and accelerating innovative business concepts, including soci