February 2017

Two workshops with Dr. Francis Jumba, APPEAR scholarship Alumni took place in September 2016 and January 2017 at Mountains of the Moon University (MMU) with the aim of building capacities among MMU staff in the fields of agroecological value chain management and the development of innovative teaching unit design.

The workshop “The concept of agro-ecological value chain management” enabled the 21 participants from MMU to have understanding of the critical value chain concepts in the modern markets and the meaning and dynamics of value chain models. With the emerging trends of globalization, participants were taken through the drivers, trends and emerging issues in contemporary agricultural value chains as well as gender dynamics in value chains and invited to connect these tendencies with the Rwenzori region. Implications of such trends to small holder producers using specific agri-products as case examples and reflecting them from an agroecological perspective, was a special focus in the workshop.

At the end of January 2017 the workshop “Innovative teaching unit design – sharing and reflecting the experiences and developing new approaches” took place at MMU and aimed to enabled the 25 participants – future teacher of the AE master curriculum at MMU – the development of innovative module and research outlines of their modules, based on the experiences of running a master curriculum at Ugandan Martyrs University, Nkozi. The design of modules has to contain the open up of multi-layered spaces for mutual and systemic learning process by the integration of case study experiences into teaching and its analyses in AE practice.