At their February 2007 meeting, the FARA Executive Committee recommended that the FARA Secretariat develop a new strategic plan in light of the many changes in FARA’s external environment since the first strategy was adopted in 2002. Between March and June, Secretariat staff drafted the new strategy, drawing upon expert input to ensure congruence between the new strategies of CORAF/WECARD and ASARECA, and to identify key background issues that should be included in the plan. The planning process also drew upon the considerable knowledge about stakeholder needs that FARA has accrued during numerous recent consultations with partners and constituents. The first draft of the strategic plan was discussed and validated in a workshop in May 2007, involving 45 people representing a cross-section of FARA stakeholders from all over Africa. The draft strategic plan was revised to reflect stakeholder input, and was submitted to and endorsed in the Business Meeting at the Fourth FARA General Assembly.
The new strategy is designed to guide the work of both the FARA Secretariat and FARA as a Forum over the next ten years. It identifies five “networking support functions” (“NSFs”) that, taken together, should enable the FARA community to achieve the goal of establishing high, broad-based agricultural growth in Africa to reduce food insecurity and poverty and to enhance environmental conditions. The five NSFs are:

1. Advocacy and resource mobilisation – to support the SROs and their NARSs in establishing appropriate institutional and organizational arrangements (including a conducive policy, research infrastructure and financial environment) for regional agricultural research and development.
2. Access to knowledge and technologies – to empower researchers and end users through access to information, learning opportunities, and new technologies.
3. Regional policies and markets – to promote and facilitate policy analyses and market research.
4. Capacity strengthening – to ensure that Africa has the human and institutional capacity, public and private, to achieve improved broad-based agricultural productivity.
5. Partnerships and strategic alliances – to catalyse and facilitate the establishment of partnerships with the range of expertise and sufficient capacities necessary to drive agricultural innovation for African agricultural research and development.

The FARA Strategic Plan is currently being revised to incorporate comments received during and since the General Assembly. When finalized, it will be available on the FARA website, along the the Five-Year Medium-Term Operational Plan.