Approach

“Africa has entered a category of its own. Composed of the most vulnerable and marginalised, most put upon and ignored. They have become a new category of misery. A continental underclass - a fourth world.” “New Commission for Africa will look at the causes of poverty and disease and provide a ‘single, massive, coherent response’.” Sir Bob Geldof Member of the Committee of the Commission for Africa’) April 2004

The LPP is a competitively funded research programme aimed at involving
multi-disciplinary teams of scientists, policy-makers, extension agents, civil society, commodity associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs) and farmer associations in
undertaking participatory (largely ‘on-farm’) research.

The LPP requires that all activities funded by it are for the benefit of 5 discreet groups of resource-poor livestock keepers (smallholder milk producers, crop livestock farmers, smallstock keepers, landless livestock keepers and pastoralists); with the livelihoods of people being the primary focus and commodities being the secondary focus.

To ensure the sustainability of the work, we require research project teams to hold stakeholder workshops at the start (and end) of each project. This should
provide all stakeholders with an opportunity to contribute to project activities
and engender a sense of ownership of the project right from the start.