The Knowledge Centre for Organic Agriculture (KCOA) Project in Eastern Africa is in its first phase of implementation for a period of 2 years (2019- 2021). It is part of the initiative by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through its executing agency GIZ to support a network of regional knowledge hubs for organic farming in Africa. Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) is the lead coordinating agency of the project in Eastern Africa with co-hosting arrangements with Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Uganda.

The Continental Digital Knowledge Platform is part of the KCOA project coordinated by the GIZ. The overall objective of the project is to introduce knowledge hubs successfully as an innovative strategy for promoting organic agriculture with actors in the regions of West, East, and Southern Africa.

For Eastern Africa, the overall goal of the project is to ensure the integration of Ecological Organic Agriculture into the various countries’ agricultural systems. The KCOA Project aligns with the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative (EOA-I), an African Union-led continental undertaking with the oversight of the African Union Commission (AUC) Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture. The Commission provides oversight through the Continental Steering Committee of the EOA-I that it chairs.

The initial implementation of KCOA Project in Eastern Africa will take place in 4 countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania, in the first phase of the two years (August 2019-July 2021). The expectation is to later bring on board Ethiopia and Burundi.

The project focus on three main action fields, namely:

1. Collecting/preparing knowledge in organic agriculture: Validated technical and methodological knowledge for the promotion of organic agriculture, including processing, is prepared for the context of the participating countries and stakeholder groups.
2. Dissemination of knowledge to many users: Validated knowledge, strategies and good practices in the field of organic agriculture, adapted to the contexts of the countries participating in the regional knowledge hubs, are disseminated to various target user groups.
3. Networking within agricultural value chains: Key actors in the organic agriculture value chains of the participating countries in the three regions network in an exemplary manner for replication