Towards a Productive Collaboration in Research and Implementation of Climate-Smart Conservation Agriculture in Sierra Leone

The case study examines the research support by Cornell University to CARE Sierra Leone’s work as an implementing partner to the USAID-funded STEWARD project in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The project is primarily a forest conservation and natural resource management project with associated villager livelihood components. The case study examines how shortcomings to understand and to accommodate the differing work of Cornell, CARE, and the donor led to missed opportunities. Had a collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) approach been utilized more formally, it would have suppressed the linear mandates of the project document and requirements placed upon implementers and potentially incorporated the research more fully into iterative and adaptive project management. The case study discusses the different elements that agricultural research brings to a project as well as its challenges to meet milestones set out at the beginning of a project. 

This case study was submitted as part of USAID's CLA Case Competition, held in August 2015. Taken together, this collection of submissions illustrates the diversity of ways collaborating, learning, and adapting approaches are being operationalized in the field. Stringent judging criteria was used to determine official CLA Case Competition winners, so not all submissions should be considered an official USAID endorsement of best practice. To view all entries, visit the CLA Case Competition page.