Linkages and value chains

This working group is chaired by Doyle Baker. Members interested in this Group should contact him at doyle.baker@fao.org.

Proposed short term actions

Based on what we said at Cartagena and as suggested in my canvassing of opinions, I would like to propose three short term actions for the period between now and the next full Committee meeting in November:

1. Agency information exchange

I have understood that the agreed first priority is to exchange information about our interests, approaches, and activities. For this, I suggest that we start by preparing and sharing short Organizational Spotlights that could cover:

What are we doing; what are we investing in
Information and training materials
Recent and on-going field projects
Technical meetings held
Inter-agency, inter-organization collaboration

To get this started, I have included in one appended file Organizational Spotlight ( 54KB) for ILO (information sent by Anne Posthuma) and for FAO. These are not complete, but I thought it better to share the information that I have and add as needed later on.

Can any of you prepare and share Organizational Spotlights for your agency? If so, please send to me during the next few weeks, if possible. When I have a few, I will assemble and circulate.

2. Information resources sharing

The second short term action, which should not require much time or effort, would be to start sharing information resources. Again, I have made a feeble start at this in this second document, Information Resources ( 45KB).

Assemble and exchange information under three categories:

Networks and Information Sites
Useful articles and reports
Upcoming events

What are the key resources and events that you can bring to our attention? Again, if you send to me, I can assemble and send out with the next round of Organizational Spotlights.

3. LVC technical workshop

The third proposed action is to see if we can organize and hold technical workshop, perhaps with IDS Sussex, for stock taking and action planning (Spring or Summer 2005). As Jeanne Downing has suggested, we could hear about Sussex's latest work and share what we are each doing - face-to-face and perhaps in the form of papers. In such a workshop, we might discuss what is needed to develop effective interventions using the value chain/cluster lens and/or approach - that reach down to small firms and farmers. IDS have suggested that, at a more ambitious level (resources permitting), we might bring together researchers, donors and practitioners in order to give impetus to the application of value chain perspectives and tools and make it much more effective. At a more modest level, we might use the meeting to discuss what to do as a group and as individual donors to move the field forward.

I've made contact with IDS and they are anxious to collaborate with the Committee on this.

Would any of you be interested co-organizing or at least participating in a Linkages and Value Chains technical workshop later this year? Please let me know if you are interested in principle, so we can begin to find mutually convenient dates. Volunteers to help organize and finance would be a particularly welcome email.

Next Steps

Any advice or comments from you on how to proceed would certainly be welcome. Meanwhile, I look forward to receiving some inputs from you as proposed above and then will get back to you as soon as there is information to share. We'll see how it goes from there.

Documents

Update on business linkage programmes
Annual Meeting of the Committee of Donor Agencies for Small Enterprise Development, Copenhagen, Sept. 2003
- MS Word, 28KB
- PDF, 20KB