Strengthening of Quality Assurance Capacities in East Africa

IFOAM – Organics International was contracted to provide the Training of Teams of Facilitators (ToToF) in East Africa by Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) in the frame of the GIZ-Global project Knowledge Centre for Organic Agriculture in Africa (KCOA).

Having completed the ToToF in 2020, IFOAM – Organics International continued to provide training on Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) in 2021. Furthermore, in 2022,  the organisation worked with Lead Trainers from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda to strengthen the quality assurance capacities in training the participants.

Quality assurance in training with a “cascade system” was identified as a priority by the Knowledge Hub of East Africa. Both the content and methodological approaches address different target groups:

• the trainers/multipliers/facilitators and the farmers,
• the institutional support needed,
• the backstopping,
• and the community building of agents of change.

They are all part of a complex knowledge system in which addressing the quality of the training is a strategic element to develop, implement and assess the performance of such capacity development efforts.