 Good morning colleagues, so I'm going to make this presentation on behalf of the Bekayu Rehab and it's a real privilege to do that. Thank you, Jay, for the nice introduction. So in terms of what I will be talking about, that is the outline, give a brief introductory remarks. Set the pitch in terms of what the Bekayu Rehab capacity building program is responding to, that is the bigger picture. Come down to specifics, what are the objectives of the program. Talk quite a bit on the Africa Biosurface Challenge Fund, which is the brand name of the program as well as the delivery mechanism. I'll go through some highlights of outputs and emerging outcomes. I'm calling them highlights because we can talk about this in various forms for quite a long time. Look a bit into the future in terms of program growth or scale-out strategy work. How are we framing the future given what we have done so far? And then of course, I must acknowledge various people including the 40 or so research scientists from the NAS who are sitting in the ministers. Thank you very much. So let me just start by saying that the Bekayu Rehab or whatever the Bekayu Rehab is doing, was set up under the AU NEPAD or Africa Union NEPAD, Africa Biosurface Initiating, which created four centers of excellence. Bekayu Rehab being one of them in Eastern and Central Africa. For all the work that it does, there are three other centers which we know about. Today is not the day to talk about that. So we are going to focus on Bekayu Rehab and how it was eventually, eventually was set within Ilni to become a co-creation of Ilni and AU NEPAD. So that history is there, is available on the internet, you can read about it. So the big question is what is the Bekayu Capacity Building Program responding, what is the bigger issue out there and what is it contributing to? I just for me bullets, cutting across at the NALS because that is the main area of focus. The issue of low critical mass of NAS scientists and biosciences research, of course that we know, you go to any institution, university, you'll be told there's one professor in this, there's one expert in this and she's the only one in this part of the region. So the critical mass is really low. Secondly, the issue of weak or ineffective links and partnerships, again that is a real pressing issue among our NALS, the issue of partnerships working together. The famous long range approach, people trying to work by themselves. So again that is something to address because if we don't, they may not move back with whatever investments that we have. The other big issue is the weak research infrastructure. When I talk of infrastructure here from our perspective, there is a big focus on the labs for the research environment around the labs. Again that is one issue we respond to. Then the issue of opportunities to effectively leverage advances in biosciences for agriculture research for development. The issue of leveraging is important because institutions need to work together. There are various opportunities, they present various comparative advantages. So these have to be coordinated and leveraged upon if we have to make any headway. Now looking at that as a bigger picture, I'm sure many of you have prayed many assessments carried out by FARA to do with the NALS carried out by sub-regional organizations. So all that bigger picture really frames what we are responding to. And all these issues we are contributing to cut up agenda, the comprehensive African agriculture development program agenda. And more specifically, down to our level, the science agenda for agriculture in Africa, which I'm sure we are all familiar with. So that is the bigger picture that whatever level that we do that contributes this bigger picture. Coming to specifics then, our capacity building program, what are the objectives? One, we are looking at strengthening capacity of NALS to harness latest bioscience technologies to improve agriculture in Africa. Technology is always changing. I always give this story of my experience at the university. There was one professor who shall remain unnamed, who was very hardworking but he had to plant a certain crop for over 15 years just trying to change the size of the seed, the color of the seed, the taste. But now technology is changing with the facilities that we have some of these processes can be done within six months or so. Secondly, we want to support NALS scientists efforts to lead and sustain bioscience research for development in Africa. So the issue here is, like if you read the science agenda for agriculture in Africa, there is a statement. I think science to outsource science for agriculture development in Africa is very expensive. So we need our own research leaders within the NALS. Thirdly, to promote access to one class research facilities that we already have and other places as well. And number four, very important, to mobilize capacities in African NALS and beyond for joint action for improving agriculture. Of course, as I said, these national institutions, the universities, research institution, ministries of agriculture, you will have various capacities, various expertise dotted around Africa. So one of the objectives is how we mobilize these, how we bring them together together to get bigger in out of that. Out of the building program, as I said, is branded Africa Bioscience Challenge Fund, and that is the main delivery mechanism. So under that is implemented in four streams. The first stream, what we call the research fellowships or the ABCS research fellowships. So these are basically research placements that we send out calls and advise applications that research scientists from the national programs who are already running their research, addressing national priorities, but then they have a limitation of either facilities or expertise. Therefore they come to Bukailu and have to conduct part of that research at the hub. The program is being, the process is quite long, but in there there are some strategies. We are aware of the less resource NALS, the country is coming out of conflict, the women representation, women in science or research issues of sustainability. So all those are ingrained in there. So these fellows or the research fellows come to Bukailu hub for up to 12 months. Right now I think we have 41 of them seated right behind you there listening to me very attentive. It is good. So these research fellowships, as I said, they are addressing national priorities. So once they are done with the research, then they go back, take their results back to the national programs to inject into the national outputs. The second stream is training workshops which I'll talk about in brief. Thirdly we have institutional capacity building, again focusing on the research infrastructure, particularly the labs. And then the fourth component is the issue of providing a platform or a magnet for joint actions by NALS. We act as a magnet, bringing us together for joint actions. Whether it is resource mobilization, whether it is putting together ideas for proposals for research, again I'll mention that a bit later on. So as I said, we have research placements who come to Bukailu hub. Now when they come, it's not that they are just coming to get the bench space, they do their business and go back. That is not the thing. The program is framed in a whole supervision, stock mentorship and suite of activities. So when they come, they have, they interact with the full-time beka hub scientists and research associates in terms of taking them through what they have to do, learning new techniques, advising them and all that. There is the beka hub extended faculty. These are partners we work with from other international institutions, from other universities who are here or elsewhere. They also benefit from that expertise. Now this could be visiting scientists who also have visiting scientists from international research institutions. I think we have Tili's right there from the joining center. She has been a very good student in contributing this program. We have fellows who come in under the same program. They contribute greatly to the program and to mentorship of other less senior fellows. We have Professor Shila Okoth sitting right here, the lady in red who has been my colleague for many, many years. I remember way back in 1992 when we started out being together, her office was opposite mine and all she had that thing was a few microscopes and all that kind of thing. So at the time she has benefited, she has now distinguished research and she has mentored quite a number of fellows, contributed to the building of the nutrition and aflatoxin platform and changed quite a number of things. So we are grateful for that. And then of course there are scientists from field biosciences and other departments all those constitute by extended faculty. We have mentorship peer review, weekly and invited guest seminars. Every Friday we have seminars before coming for the Friday coffee. There is emphasis always on the hands on and passing on the skills from what is done or what is known at the Cairo Rehab and in general to the fellows who come so that the same can be transferred as much as possible for the home institution. And then recently, of course, many of you know that we always have so many love to us interacting with donors and all that. One of the questions that came up was well these people come here they have a nice facility they have all this support so what happens when they go back home. So that was a challenge to us. And recently about two or some months ago one of my colleagues Roger, I think Roger is seated right there has introduced some sort of return to home institution preparatory process where when you are here you have enzymes that we purchase everything is in a kit but then when you go back then you have to learn how to make beyond enzymes and other things and how to adapt these advanced research environment to what you have at home which is an important aspect of the program. Let me now mention something about the kanyu workshops. There are demands from the NAS and our partners about short skill enhancement and really locking the potential of the NAS and the scientists. So we have our traditional kanyu workshops five of them the ones you can see there. These workshops are run every year once every year we run them here but it is also possible and we have done that to take them to the region. So one institution may request come and run this workshop in our institution so that more scientists can be trained or more technicians they are the aspect that is coming out quite strongly as a demand is tailor made courses but it may have researchers or may be working on a new project they need some new skills just to make them hit the ground running so we have tailor made courses like we have for a disability university so this is just a short curriculum specific for that particular particular client. Institutional capacity building as I said this is around the research research environment to try and lock the to unlock the potential of the institution to conduct research in related capacity building So in terms of institutional capacity building there are a number of aspects mainly for it could be taken for assistance in lab design management equipment installation which is quite a common challenge transfer of technologies following training of scientists who come here they now go back to the NAS so how do you assist them to transfer those technologies some of those technologies and skills Could it be resource mobilization because you can have a good lab or a fairly good lab but without resources you will not move then connections to networks and influencers like suppliers sometime this year we were in Rwanda Rwanda agriculture board labs and there was a big issue of suppliers we get reagents so that also is a NAS that we are really engaged in to try and evaluate the challenges at the NAS level so that we can really try to unlock their potential for contributing to the bigger picture which is the kind of project as I mentioned mobilizing capacities for joint action again bringing it together the best brains that we have the best experiences so that we can coalesce these two words a common journey one of the main mechanisms has been the agriculture research connection workshops which started I think in 2009 so bringing scientists and other experts from all over the world congregating here in Kenya or any other place just to think together experiences know what is going on and out of that bloom new ideas there is what we call the PAPA participant action plan which happens to be my nickname so again here what happened is that when fellows are leaving they have to give us at least three activities that they will do so that one there is more awareness about BECA two they present about their work three they explore opportunities they explore opportunities for collaborating with BECA more or partnering with BECA more or other institutions so that we are really mobilizing capacities we get to know who is out there who we can work with and who can also work with us so that we build that platform out there there is communities of practice again I will talk a little bit about that because now we have quite a big forum of alumni out there so we want to organize them so that we can coalesce and bring that energy and experience and expertise into action and then the other areas because mobilization I put there is because recently there was a call by the world bank to create African centers of excellence and BECA acted as a magnet to 15 research consortia from Africa it was not easy but we made it we were able to support them and the process is still going on we are hoping that at least we get some of these funded so having given those highlights we will end with on some of the main achievements just the highlights in terms of outputs and emerging outcomes ABC research fellows so far we have 226 trained for will be who will have gone through the process by the end of 2015 these are grown from 21 African countries now the research focus is really on the 5 key themes so research themes BECA so although we may say also that those that are in livestock livestock improvement livestock improvement is really big we are talking about breeding, nutrition and all those aspects so it is really broad but basically we love them in those 5 key areas research themes recently we looked at the projects and how they fit into the 5 themes so we came up with this pie chart and we realized that most of the projects lie between livestock or within livestock research and crop research so that 2% of the research or the projects who are looking at livestock research or improvement 44% in crop research improvement full safety and nutrition 11% underutilized species of crops and livestock 6% change 4% and of course there are others that we like delving in these are new areas, interesting areas areas for the future medicine of lands, bush meat, bees and all that so that was a category of others which found 2% so in terms of contributing to the BECA ill rate hub and ill nutrition that is how the research looks like training workshops trained about 556 people, research scientists from 27 countries here the female representation is normally greater, is more than 50% but going to the fellowships we normally dangle between 32-35% for good reason of course because we know the issues of women participation in science women training where you have to host them where you have to live your family and all that so that is where we are in terms of publications total journals total journal papers coming out of back at the moment we are 1 hour and 56 out of this 61 are from the ABCF fellows and we have quite a number of manuscripts coming now and the program has registered its presence in high end journals science for example and quite a number of these and right now as we see everybody is closing fingers and a paper was submitted to nature so we are waiting for the outcome so that is a contribution to science communities of practice as I said we have quite a large alumni out there and we are now as the program grows we have seen how we bring these experiences these expertise together to come up with bigger programs teach their research within the national programs and they can also they can always come back to do part of their their work in so we have 4 nascent communities of practice really at this stage there is one on taro involving four countries and I will just ask the steward we have steward somebody taking the lead for these communities of practice so I will just ask the steward for taro COP and chicken COP just for half a minute to mention about how many countries and I will continue from there so David good afternoon everyone my name is David I am from Ethiopians of agriculture research I am also a PhD student at Pinsland University of Technology Australia the project on taro it started back in 2013 when I was here to do various survey projects for samples from Ethiopia but due to the help of supervisor from here in Australia we discussed and we need to include the project because taro or hard work is very basic and good source of carbohydrate in the region currently we include Uganda Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia and the whole project but in early June July I was on a field survey in Uganda and Tanzania and we noticed that virus is not the only problem but also bacterial and fungal diseases which are seriously affecting the crop and I can say it becomes totally orphan the crop because of production loss with my supervisor in Australia I got a chance to link up with secretariat of Pacific community in Fiji there is a lab called SEPA called Center for Pacific crops and trees that lab it has the world's largest collection of taro and among their collection they have around 20 to 25 varieties which are moderately and highly resistant to fungal bacterial and viral leaves of taro so when I was on my field trip to Uganda and Tanzania I discussed with people working on root crop at Naro and Marine and they are very much interested and then we further communicate with the representative from SEPA from Fiji and they are very willing to give us starting materials tissue culture materials of those resistant, 25 resistant materials so that we can further multiply in tissue culture and maybe do a kind of field trail in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya and for that project we have a representative from Ethiopia and Beka will be the host for the whole project that's all good afternoon everyone I am Ketian Gambo-Tiambo from Invercho-Oboia in Cameroon so we are almost working on low-calgic hand development so the work started really here in 2012 when I came for part of my PhD and from there, thanks to the capacity building of a team of Beka I've been able to gather some other people from different countries from First Cameroon then Kabul, Central Africa Republic Rwanda and the other country, Uganda who are now also working on this low-calgic hand genetic research and development we have developed a committee of parties and now we are working not only on genetic itself but also on nutrition, disease resistance etc and I would like to say that it is really time to the capacity building of Beka and what I will add is that this aspect of capacity building is highly appreciated at the national level I can take an example when I was here just when I came a few months after my arrival here I was appointed as animal science program coordinator at the University of Boa so the issue here the team here is really appreciated at the higher level from our countries so that the experience that we are getting here we can easily transfer them to our countries and to the neighboring countries so thank you very much for everything thank you very much so we have another two main data on necrosis disease and striga resistance that is for me in terms of outcomes how do we know about this in 2014 the program underwent an external review by Dalba consultants that gave us a lot of information this kind of testimonies by our alumni are very important we talk to our partners what they are saying in the next few years as beggar staff, beggar scientists and people managing the program all that is some of the things we call outcome so this is an excerpt from our reports in terms of how we are meeting our objectives well there is calls we could do it a bit of improvement but they are not that bad so basically the message is there is very strong endorsement by the stakeholders of the program there is ABCF contribution impact Wulu University is one of those universities in Lennotan, Uganda there has been a lot of work over a number of years we need some lab improvement last year the process started much earlier on some months back my colleague Josephine and Osaso sent out brief questionnaire just asking so how did it help what difference did it make and we received this statement which I will read from Wulu University and it says we are now using our own lab for research mentoring and training of 7 MSE and PAK students that we would previously send out to Makarewa University and abroad so that is a statement from Wulu University and then also central veterinary site laboratories we trained one of the researchers from there I will not ask the boss or the head of virology who is here getting the new talk but she tells me that because of that training they are doing things differently they have extra capacity they have learned new tools in Sudan we have struggle resistance and so come morality is reduced and of course there is increased awareness about Beka in rehab and of course I remember how much time we spent with journalists from Germany last Sunday with Shalian group and the journalists were talking nice things which is always good in terms of looking forward or the next pitch for the program we have talked about communities of practice harnessing the alumni we must link universities policy some of these information findings engaging national council for science and technology strengthening engages with intermediary organizations that can translate some of the findings into policy we are discussing very seriously with ISAR just down the road the international service for the acquisition of adribiotec applications to help us do this whatever we are doing we can't do it alone we have a huge suite of partners I could not put all of them there but they are all appreciated they are part of the process we learn a lot from them they support us a lot so we appreciate them from the resource envelope side of things and supporting side of things we appreciate our investors so the Beka investors very very much without them we cannot do much so a big clap for them after this but let me just say that capacity building Beka operates like a three decades tool there is capacity building there is research and technology so this presentation is normally much bigger and then after this there is my colleague from the technology side who presents and research who presents but then because of time and the focus of the discussion we will not be able to do that thank you very much