Bridging agricultural science and policy: A Capacity-Building Workshop on Political Economy and Collaboration

The next few years will provide key opportunities to advance regional agricultural integration in West Africa, given the domestication of the CAADP’s Kampala Declaration, the implementation of the AfCFTA, and the new ten-year cycle of ECOWAP, among others. Regional agricultural integration is fundamental for West Africa to develop more resilient, sovereign, and productive agricultural systems and to attract the necessary finance for such development, both at the regional level (such as for regional corridors) and at the national level.

Despite this potential, bridging the gap between scientific evidence and actionable policy remains an intricate challenge. While technical data is often abundant, it frequently fails to influence decision- making because scientists and decision-makers lack a common baseline. This disconnect is further exacerbated by “knowledge asymmetry,” in which both groups use different vocabularies, follow conflicting timelines, and prioritise divergent priorities. Furthermore, traditional policy development commonly encounters “analytical blind spots,” focusing strictly on technical “what” needs to be done while neglecting the “political economy”, the elaborate network of vested interests, institutional power dynamics, and economic incentives that ultimately dictate whether a policy is implemented or sidelined.

To address these static methodologies, CORAF and ECDPM, under the project “Strengthening Evidence Based Policy Practice for Sustainable Food Systems” (StEPPFoS), an EU Horizon-funded project that provides the overarching structure for these Science-to-Policy Co-Labs, plan to organise two workshops to help regional stakeholders move beyond theoretical discussions and deliver practical, hands-on capacity building.