Building on earlier experiences such as LEAP-Agri, Belmont Forum and JPI FACCE, the project will implement a range of joint activities, contributing to the creation of a strong and effective trans-national, European-African-Latin America and the Caribbean research and innovation network and the better coordination and synergising of national, international and EU research programmes relevant to food security under climate change evolution. The joint call will focus on regional food systems within a global perspective and addressing: - Assessing climate change-related risks for food value chains, including impacts on prices, international trade and food security, and resulting changes in consumer behaviours. The three dimensions of sustainability will be adressed: social-cultural, economic, and environmental (including climate change mitigation); - Improving resilience and reducing volatility in agri-food production and food markets to sustainably improve food security in the context of climatic variation; - Reducing food losses under climate change including through novel approaches to valorise side streams and reduce food waste. The first pillar of the proposal relates to the preparation and implementation of a joint call for proposals for collaborative research and innovation projects, funded by European, African and South American national research funding agencies, with additional support from the European Commission. In addition, the call will be co-funded by some Belmont Forum members. These countries does not want to participate to the EU project but will be surely, as Belmont forum, member participating to the call, funding their national teams without any top up from the European Commission. The projects selected through the call will focus on achieving goals of mutual benefit for Member States, Associated Countries and Africa and South America countries, based on a balanced and cooperative approach.

IST-Africa (2016 - 2018) has 4 complimentary objectives focused on strengthening ICT-related research and innovation cooperation between Europe and Africa: 1) Foster greater coordination of research and innovation activities; 2) Strengthen research and innovation linkages, increase awareness of research and innovation capacity and cooperation opportunities, and support mutually beneficial collaboration; 3) Monitor research and innovation activities in 17 IST-Africa Partner Countries to identify and provide input on common R&D priorities and future cooperation opportunities; and 4) Promote participation in ICT-39-2017 and other relevant Horizon 2020 calls, disseminate results from ICT-39-2015 and other relevant calls. IST-Africa (2016 - 2018) leverages results and achievements from previous phases of IST-Africa to realise its objectives. Coordination will be undertaken through national Horizon 2020 Train-the-Trainer Workshops and stakeholder meetings. Help Desk activities, international conferences and engagement with African and European stakeholders will assist in strengthening research and innovation linkages. Surveys will be undertaken across the 17 participating African Member States to monitor ICT-related research and innovation activities, map research and innovation capacity, priorities and bilateral cooperation initiatives to support future planning. Relevant calls will be promoted and results disseminated through national and international dissemination channels, physical meetings and conference presentations. All activities are well aligned with the work programme priorities through the organisation of research and innovation events and conferences with policy dimensions, monitoring of research and innovation activities, identification of common R&D priorities, strengthening linkages, raising awareness of collaboration opportunities, dissemination of results and building on the achievements of an ongoing Support Action for Africa.

The general objective of LEAP4FNSSA is to establish a sustainable structure, or ‘Platform’, for the efficient and coherent implementation of the AU-EU Research and Innovation Partnership as described in the FNSSA Roadmap. Under the aegis of the HLPD and its Bureau, and by building upon related projects such as RINEA, CAAST-Net. Plus, ProIntensAfrica and LEAP-Agri, LEAP4FNSSA aims to achieve this overall objective through three specific objectives: - Increase the synergies and coherence between actors, research and innovation projects, initiatives and programmes, through the development of institutional alliances and clusters of projects; - Develop a learning environment and a large knowledge base, including monitoring and evaluation activities, creating communication and links between different initiatives to improve STI cooperation; - Establish a long term and sustainable governance and funding mechanism for the Platform. To reach these objectives, LEAP4FNSSA will build on a large consortium of experienced partners and implement a methodology based on 3 principles: long-term impact, relevance of the outputs to the HLPD, and innovative actions. Long-term impact of the CSA relates to its main objective to enable and catalyse the transformation of the existing AU EU FNSSA Partnership into a bi-continental Platform for collaboration, organised along a Knowledge and Management Communication Framework. Outputs relevant to the HLPD will be achieved by connecting and framing activities of all Work Packages on top of the supporting activities specifically requested in the SFS-33-2018. Innovative actions are foreseen to run the Platform efficiently throught e.g. the development of a new approach to information mapping, text and data mining, and testing of multistakeholder alliances at a regional level and the mobilisation of actors to manage research and innovation programming in a 4-steps management cycle.