CONNECTED - COmmunity Network for africaN vECTor borne plant viruses

We propose a network in Vector Borne Disease (VBD) Research focusing on improved control of Plant Viruses, namely 'CONNECTED' - COmmunity Network for africaN vECTor borne plant viruses. Our focus is Sub Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions of the world and in which VBDs create highly significant constraints for production of staple and cash crops, for example cassava (cassava brown streak and mosaic diseases), sweet potato (sweet potato virus disease), maize (maize lethal necrosis) and yam (badnaviruses and yam mosaic virus diseases). Limiting production causes poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition, which in turn prevents economic and social development. Emergence of new VBDs in combination with climate change, resource limitations and a growing population will impact this region sooner and more significantly than other parts of the world and is of global significance.
More effective agricultural research communities producing a pipeline of innovative disease control strategies are needed to increase agricultural productivity, improve incomes and market participation for smallholder farmers. 'CONNECTED' seeks to improve livelihoods of people in Sub-Saharan Africa by, firstly, engaging with established networks, stakeholders and funders in the region to focus and refine the most pressing research targets, preventing overlap with existing activities and targeting the work of the network to ensure UK academic excellence has maximum impact. Secondly, 'CONNECT' will pump prime a number of targeted innovative activities to generate tangible outputs in the short term, provide capacity building and training for virologists and other beneficiaries in the region. Finally, we will focus on growing 'CONNECTED' beyond researchers and other practitioners, to policy makers, funders, extension services, and certification schemes to generate a forum for knowledge exchange and sustainable activity in the field of VBD, ensuring UK academic excellence targets its research to deliver regional development impact beyond the three years of the project.
CONNECTED has assembled an inter-disciplinary management board with an independent chair, an experienced management team and effective governance structure. Every member has active collaborations in Sub Saharan Africa working on diverse but complementary aspects of VBD control, ensuring the work undertaken is relevant, novel and utilises academic excellence most efficiently. We have board members from five significant research institutes in East and West Africa (IITA, KALRO, KEPHIS, AATF and NARO), providing the focus for the network activities within three Lower Middle Income Countries as defined by OECD's Development Assistance Committee, namely Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. We have leading experts on VBD as well as specialists in sustainability, social and environmental sciences, impact, learning, evaluation and inter-disciplinarity. Our board covers not just academic research organisations, but policy, extension and certification within the region, so as to not just focus on research excellence, but to deliver long lasting impact in the region. The board has identified five key areas where 'CONNECTED' will benefit sustainable VBD control: 1. Control strategies, 2. Vector biology, 3 New Diseases, 4. Vector/Virus Interactions, 5. Diagnostics/Surveillance/Forecasting; as identified by the ODA relevance statement. The board has decided to focus beyond specific single crop VBDs to include all VBDs of importance to African smallholders. To date international investment has focused predominantly on specific VBDs (e.g. in cassava and sweet potato) with some neglected and emerging VBDs (e.g. in yams, maize and beans) remaining under-researched. A major aim of CONNECTED will be to connect UK and African experts to pull together knowledge across crops, disciplines and regions to have maximum impact on food security from the mixed cropping systems important to smallholders.

VBDs cause constraints for production of staple and cash crops. Studies on vector diversity and dynamics critically at the landscape level, including understanding population dynamics within and between seasons and relative changes in virus incidence are all critical to improved forecasting and surveillance, and to assess the impact of climate change. To make progress we need to bring together an interdisciplinary community Network of researchers and stakeholders to bring innovative solutions to these intractable problems. We will focus the work in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda and have in our network/management board the most respected research, extension and certification organisations (IITA, KALRO, NARO, AATA and KEPHIS) from these countries. The work can be summarised as 1. Control strategies, 2. Vector biology, 3 New Diseases, 4. Vector/Virus Interactions, 5. Diagnostics/Surveillance/Forecasting. The aims of the project are to first, build a network of interdisciplinary academic scientists in the UK and internationally who can work with stakeholders in the region to identify significant research questions. By building the network we will connect with on-going activities e.g. through AgShare Today to ensure there is no duplication with existing work, providing value for money and maximising impact. Second, we will fund pump-prime projects in our five target areas. Grant writing workshops in Kenya and Uganda will ensure regional collaboration, capacity building and support for early-career scientists are key objectives. Thirdly, recognising the project has a finite time span in its current form a key objective is to ensure that the work done in building and connecting the network becomes sustainable. By demonstrating the outputs and quantifying the impacts that the project makes to international funders and stakeholders we aim to secure CONNECTED as a self sustaining community meeting the needs of VBD research and providing a project legacy into the future.

The proposed COmmunity Network for africaN vECTor borne plant viruses, CONNECTED seeks to make considerable impact to a wide range of actors who will benefit from the network and the research being funded. Our focus is Sub Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions of the world and in which VBDs create highly significant constraints for production of staple and cash crops, limiting productivity, causing poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition, which in turn prevents economic and social development.

CONNECTED will initially impact academic beneficiaries by funding collaborative, interdisciplinary pump-prime research work for example on vector diversity and dynamics, vector-host-pathogen interactions with a focus on in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. This will enhance the research capacity, knowledge and skills of organisations in these countries as well as the UK. By delivering training to collaborative partners we will achieve instrumental and conceptual impacts on academic beneficiaries, in particular early career researchers who will be able to apply those techniques in future research activities. We will deliver training on new approaches to detection of VBD and use of techniques for forecasting and surveillance. Expertise in virology and vector entomology is presently very scarce in much of Sub Saharan Africa, and hence impact here will be clear. The training will also lead to capacity building impacts for extension and certification organisations by training of skilled people working in non-academic professions.

By bringing together key stakeholders in the agricultural value chain (e.g. Kephis and AATA) into the CONNECTED Network and facilitating interaction with and between academic practitioners (in the UK and Africa), we expect to make a conceptual impact on the approaches of policy makers, certification and extension bodies, which will contribute towards evidence based policy-making. The network will provide a platform for influencing public policies and legislation initially at a national level in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.

In our aim to achieve impact, we will ensure discussions are held at the Network inception meeting regarding activities already occurring in these and neighbouring countries. African members will familiarise UK network members with their knowledge of the work already underway that has encouraged African country government policy support and funding flows from within Africa. The kick off meetings will be used to draft 'a theory of change' for the network with clear actors and impact pathways for each of the countries focused on. This will then form the basis of the partnership plan and the performance assessment of the assumptions underpinning these pathways towards the outcomes sought (products, services, knowledge, capacity etc.) as well as the impacts such as improved food security, income and choices for farmers including smallholder farmers.

Ultimately these impacts will be felt at the international level in other countries in Sub Saharan Africa where VBD problems are shared and the Network will reach. By bringing together academic beneficiaries together with organisations such as African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) who are responsible for promoting public/private partnerships for the delivery of appropriate agricultural technologies for sustainable use by smallholder farmers. We will achieve conceptual impacts not just to the academic beneficiaries in terms of better understanding of the delivery of practical solutions, but also to private companies understanding developments as they begin to become available.

We will achieve instrumental impacts, by delivering protocols for improved practice in the control of VBD, improved control will enhance the economic prospects of small-holder farmers, improving their quality of life, health and well-being.