Optimisation of the water and climate science, policy and practice nexus: Insights from the AfriAlliance knowledge brokerage events.

Over a five year period, a systemic approach to water and climate solutions refer to as social innovation was developed in the framework of the AfriAlliance project. The approach recognised the need to combine five aspects for increased relevance and synergies for the water and climate science, policy and practices. The above mentioned aspects included technological solutions, governance structures, capacity development, a business roadmap and knowledge brokerage events. This manuscript documents lessons learned from the fifteen knowledge brokerage events held across the African Continent.  These events provided a platform to 1060 participants who came across 125 innovations. Policy makers, funders, utility operators, scientists, non-governmental organisations, river’s authorities and organisations, entrepreneurs and practioners were represented. The AfriAlliance knowledge brokerage events covered all the 5 African sub-regions. These events were designed and implemented in an innovative way providing participants ample opportunity to network and engage with innovators after their pitch presentations. Specialised and high-level panels provided policy makers, funders and international cooperating partners an opportunity to share their perspectives with innovators and the audience. Policy makers recurrently indicated the need to align water and climate innovations and solutions to existing priorities and frameworks. Funders and international cooperating partners highlighted the limited capacity from innovators in terms of scalability and access to funding. These events also brought up the difficulty of always getting the right audience especially when the knowledge brokerage event took place in the framework of specialized conferences. The Covid-19 pandemic introduced also an additional layer of complexity and required some adaptation to the face to face set-up that was initially designed. Hence two out of the fifteen events took place online. The virtual setup appeared to reach a broader geographical audience but the interactions were not as effective as those organised in person.  These events have shown a considerable potential to bring together scientists, policy makers and practioners in order to match topical solution providers and the users. On the other hand, these kind of knowledge brokerage events remain project dependent and adhoc in nature for one to expect some long-term impact.