KCOA is a collaborative country-led partnership that aims to scale up adoption of organic and agro-ecological farming practices through a network of five Knowledge Hubs in Africa. The local implementing organisations mainly have three objectives:
The Knowledge Hubs work in 17 different countries across the continent and involve a network of over 30 partner organisations – mainly local civil-society organisations and international partners, such as FiBL.
The KCOA overall objectives are supported by FiBL by the following benchmarks:
FiBL supports in a technical manner, all knowledge Hubs in Western, Southern, Eastern, Central, and Northern Africa in implementing their activities and achieving their objectives on knowledge gathering and validation, dissemination of the validated knowledge as well as promotion and strengthening of networks among organic actors. Recognizing the differences in existing capacities and strengths among the Knowledge Hubs, FiBL places great emphasis on supporting the Knowledge Hubs according to their specific needs and stages in the development of the project.
FiBL also helps harmonize methodologies and approaches among all regions for a more coordinated and coherent outcome. This harmonized approach is especially important because all the Knowledge Hubs work together in building the Digital Knowledge Platform and the Multipliers Network continental wide platform, one of the core developments of KCOA.
Advising the hub partners and GIZ project mamanagement, mainly on issues related to research methodology, digitalization and context knowledge on African organic actors and existing knowledge.