Project

Netherlands East African Dairy Partnership (NEADAP2)

By bringing together relevant dairy actors in East Africa around scalable solutions, NEADAP creates synergy on dairy development. Through collaboration on the key themes of healthy diets, milk quality, extension services, and sustainable farming, NEADAP contributes to safe and nutritious dairy products, employment, and ecologically sound food production.

A wide range of Dutch actors have been working on development of the dairy sector in East Africa over the past decades. On an incidental basis ties were formed between projects funded by the Dutch Government,  NGOs, knowledge and training institutes and the private sector, both Dutch and African. The Netherlands East African Dairy Partnership (NEADAP) is creating a platform for a sector-wide exchange of knowledge and experience on dairy sector development.

By the end of 2021, the partnership of WUR, SNV, Solidaridad, and Agriterra started its next phase (NEADAP 2), based on the results from previous NEADAP projects. NEADAP 2 will support scaling, linking and mainstreaming of initiatives between actors in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. NEADAP is building on existing initiatives of the key partners, such as the BRIDGE project in Ethiopia and the TIDE project in Uganda, addressing the core challenges of development in the dairy sector across the six countries. The Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP) assists NEADAP in linking to the Dutch dairy sector, Dutch policy makers, and wider Dutch stakeholders.

The need for Dairy Development

Dairy is a valuable component for fighting malnutrition across East Africa due to its high-quality protein and easy-to-adsorb micronutrients. Access to safe and nutritious dairy products is therefore of crucial importance. Additionally, the production of dairy provides farm households with a regular source of income. This serves as a prime motivation for dairy farmers to expand their business and increase market participation. Although cows efficiently transform plant products not fit for human consumption into nutritious food, inefficiencies across the value chain have resulted in high cost-prices and unsafe products. With a continues growing demand for dairy products, the development of the dairy sector needs to address challenges related to inefficiencies, production costs and quality.

Objectives

NEADAP2 will build on innovative practices developed in ongoing programs through a co-creation process. This process entails developing innovations into scalable prototypes, scaling tested solutions, and finally mainstreaming them on a large scale. The growing demand for dairy products offers an unique opportunity for dairy to contribute to healthy diets, employment, and ecologically sound food production by:

  1. providing affordable, safe and nutritious diets for bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers
  2. developing efficient value chains that generate rural incomes and improved livelihoods
  3. developing dairy farming systems that are productive, profitable, resource efficient, ecological sustainable and climate smart

Six themes and three clusters of activities

Partner participation will vary across the six NEADAP2 themes and activities. The six NEADAP themes are healthy diets for BoP consumers, milk safety and value chain collaboration, self-sustaining extension services, sustainable dairy farming systems, future dairy professionals and policy dialogue. These will be impemented in three sets of project activities:

A) Product development and adaptation - Compiling information and evidence on selected solutions for the dairy sector, termed ‘products’ by NEADAP. Developing guidelines and training materials, as well as adaptation of products to new countries.

B) Scaling and mainstreaming - By local dairy cooperatives, companies and service firms; local government agencies; universities and research institutes, with advice from NEADAP staff. Scaling and mainstreaming will enable further utilization of the products in new organizations and in new countries. Lessons learned will be shared in communities of practice.

C) Platform activities - Creating general networking and learning opportunities through specific events (e.g. conferences, workshops, webinars).