Leveraging the power of partnerships to effectively engage universities for enhanced food security

In 2011, the U.S. Agency for International Development, through the USDA/Foreign Agricultural Service launched a new strategy to support relationships between USA, Indian and African Universities to improve agricultural capacity in Africa. Our partnership is titled the Egerton University/Punjab Agricultural University/Ohio State University, Trilateral Partnership for Food Security. Ohio State University (OSU) and Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) are working with Egerton University’s Faculty of Agriculture to enhance its capacity to provide tertiary agricultural education, research and outreach programs that contribute to improving food security and poverty alleviation in Kenya. Partnerships have been identified as critical to capacity development initiatives. Some characteristics of successful capacity development partnerships are that they are built on mutual trust, long-term partnerships, integrate the complementary assets of participating institutions and result in mutually beneficial outcomes. Tactically, the conduct of strategic planning efforts, prior to initiating collaborative activities is important so that partners can participate in designing their own projects and work plans. This article presents lessons learned and experiences with the process of incorporation of these elements with