Policy LINK Brings Together Food Security 'Champions' in Ethiopia
With support from Policy LINK’s Champions for Food Security (C4FS) activity, implemented in partnership with the USAID/Ethiopia mission, two cohorts of Ethiopian and international professionals have completed a four-day Leading for Results webinar series. Participants in the series, the activity’s inaugural public engagement since it was launched late last year, included representatives of other USAID Implementing Partners in the country as well as non-state actors, or NSAs, such as academic and research institutions, civil society organizations, and private-sector entities.
Their engagement will be a linchpin of the C4FS strategy, which aims, as its name conveys, to develop the capacity of policy system "champions.” The five-year C4FS activity is part of USAID/Ethiopia’s broader push to facilitate the transition from a government-led and -implemented policy development paradigm to one driven by multiple stakeholders. At issue is whether leaders in the private sector, civil society, and academia can play a more pronounced role in formulating agriculture and food system policy and ensuring its effective implementation.
Bringing these leaders together, where they could forge common cause and explore topics of leadership, was a key objective of the Leading for Results series. Over four days, each cohort — which included 37 representatives of non-state actors and 26 representatives of USAID Implementing Partners — engaged in facilitated discussions anchored in four themes: growth mindset, leadership styles, collaboration, and leading rather than managing. A full description of the content as well as links to slides and participant resources can be found on the Policy LINK website here.
Policy LINK adapts its Leading for Results series, which has also been delivered in Bangladesh, to local contexts, where empowering local leaders to engage effectively in policy systems — especially around agriculture — is a key aim of the USAID program. With “buy-ins” from five USAID missions as well as the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, which oversees the global project, Policy LINK is a global Feed the Future program to advance leadership and collaboration for better policy systems. Feed the Future is America’s global hunger and food security initiative, led by USAID.
Resources
For more information about the Leading for Results series, please see here.