At the end of the last seminar-block of the multilateral 'Transitional Agriculture' project at the end of June 2020, the participants were requested to indicate their areas of interest for the upcoming seminar topics. “Capacity Development” and “Support for processing and adding value” were identified as the major topics of interest to further elaborate on.

Therefore, the seminar series in 2020 will focus on "Capacity Development (CD)" while in the following year 2021 the focus will be put on the topic " Support for processing and adding value ". In this context, CD defines short- and long-term means to define and make use of the available capacities which are relevant within the farmers’ organization (FO) and for its members.

The first seminar of the second seminar-block has already taken place on 9th September. Within the seminar the current state of the CD in the different national FO were determined with regard to the roles within the organization itself, the various activities, target groups and different approaches for implementation.

Based on the identified current state of the organizations, the visions and future plans for the next ten years will be discussed in the next seminar, which will take place on 23rd September. The CD expert, Dr. Andreas Quiring from the Andreas Hermes Academy, will present useful instruments and business models to the participating FOs.

We are looking forward to further exchange with the national FOs from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Germany, Russia and Ghana.