FORUM FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA, GHANA

Their core work

FARA is the continental forum that coordinates agricultural research across Africa, serving as a bridge between African research institutions and international partners. They specialize in building long-term EU-Africa partnerships focused on food and nutrition security, sustainable agriculture, and soil information systems. Their core role is policy coordination, research agenda-setting, and connecting African agricultural priorities with European research funding and expertise. Based in Accra, they act as the African voice in EU-AU research collaboration on food systems.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

FARA's H2020 trajectory shows a clear progression from broad partnership-building to concrete technical implementation. Their early work (PROIntensAfrica, 2015-2017) focused on scoping and defining sustainable food security partnerships between the EU and Africa. By 2018-2022, they took the lead as coordinator on LEAP4FNSSA, moving from participant to driver of EU-AU food and nutrition security strategy. Their most recent involvement (Soils4Africa, 2020-2025) marks a shift toward hard data infrastructure — soil mapping, sample analysis, and geospatial systems — suggesting a pivot from policy talk to ground-level scientific infrastructure.

FARA is moving from high-level coordination toward data-driven agricultural infrastructure, making them increasingly relevant for projects needing African field data and soil science networks.

How they like to work

FARA operates as both a leader and contributor — they coordinated LEAP4FNSSA (their largest project at EUR 352K) while joining as participant in two others. With 60 unique consortium partners across 29 countries, they function as a network hub connecting European research institutions with African agricultural systems. Their broad partner base and pan-African mandate make them a high-connectivity node rather than a specialized technical contributor.

FARA has collaborated with 60 unique partners across 29 countries, reflecting their role as a pan-African coordinating body that bridges African and European research communities. Their network spans both EU member states and African nations, giving them unusually broad geographic coverage for consortium building.

What sets them apart

FARA occupies a rare position as a continental African organization with direct H2020 coordination experience — most African partners in EU projects are national-level institutions. Their pan-African mandate means they can mobilize research networks across the entire continent, not just one country. For any EU consortium needing genuine African ownership and reach in food security or agricultural research, FARA is one of very few organizations that can deliver continent-wide coordination from the African side.

Highlights from their portfolio

• LEAP4FNSSA
  FARA's only coordinator role, largest funding (EUR 352K), and the direct implementation vehicle for the EU-AU food and nutrition security research partnership.
• Soils4Africa
  Ambitious continent-wide soil information system running until 2025, combining Copernicus satellite data with ground-level soil sampling across Africa — a major data infrastructure project.