Generally, students from LUANAR and MSU would work together to identify and propose solutions to constraints in urban food exchange and provisioning, and would do so in collaboration with those who do this work in Lilongwe. The collaboration would enhance MSU students to appreciate urban food environments in the global south, as well as the complexity of working in them, while students from LUANAR will enhance their skills in formulating local level solutions for improved urban food system and contribute to national development agenda.
Together the LUANAR and MSU students would gain an understanding of collaborative, inclusive, and integrated approaches to development. This activity intends to build the capacity of MSU and LUANAR faculty in providing experiential learning opportunities in a context that deliberately addresses rapidly changing food environments
Collaborative development and implementation of the Frugal Innovation Practicum (FIP) between LUANAR and GCFSI-MSU represents a good fit for several reasons:

1. MSU and LUANAR have a strong history of mutually beneficial research and education collaborations over the years, which provides a strong foundation for developing, piloting, and refining new opportunities that strengthen both institutions.
2. MSU and LUANAR have mutually stated goals of improving interdisciplinary education for students in the context of rapidly changing food environments. Urban food systems are changing rapidly and those changes are not being well-addressed by research nor by policy-makers. This activity provides an opening for engaging students, faculty, and policy-makers.
3. LUANAR has expressed a need to provide its students with more experiential learning opportunities. Such opportunities are often missing in African universities, and building LUANAR’s capacity to deliver such training represents an important institutional advancement.
4. LUANAR has incorporated public private partnership and graduate entrepreneurial programs into its curricula, which are building the capacity of students to create employment, improve household food security and be involved in national challenges that include food insecurity.

The FIP represents another avenue for building this capacity. Expected outcomes The main beneficiaries of this activity are students, but there are important outcomes for faculty and for both institutions. Frugal Innovation Practicum serves to establish a foundation and baseline for future courses. The focus in the first practicum will be on innovations in urban markets. Future iterations could take on other issues related to urban food provisioning and exchange, including urban livestock management, urban agriculture, rural-urban transfers, food processing, and home-based food enterprises.
For MSU, the goal is to institutionalize this program as a yearly Study Abroad. Post-FIP, the outcomes will be incorporating student feedback and faculty learning into a revised iteration of the FIP and submit it to the Study Abroad office for approval.
The practicum also offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to engage in a hands-on experience to engage with real-world development issues, and to collaborate with and learn from people in the communities most affected by economic marginalization. Such a practicum offers the opportunity to develop a number of ‘core competencies’ identified by GCFSI

1. Knowledge and Intercultural Understanding: Students will develop appreciation for different ways of seeing and doing, and learn that definitions and enactments of well-being are cultural products, not universal ones. The mix of in-class theory and field practice helps students to reinforce knowledge gained in a classroom setting, as well as enhances their ability to critically assess it. In addition, students will gain experience in techniques to engage communities in processes designed to promote inclusive development.
2. Communication: Students will learn how to communicate with different audiences by tailoring messages accordingly, listening, and speaking and writing clearly. In addition, the final project requires students to translate their experiences into products that convey the lessons learned to a wider
3. Entrepreneurial Skills: Because students are working in a market environment, they will develop a sense of how traders and retailers make decisions, what constraints and opportunities they face, their ability to take risk, and how business transactions take place
4. Communication and Relationship Management: Students will learn how to collaborate with people from different backgrounds to reach common goals. They will learn how to solicit input from people from a wide range of backgrounds, and demonstrate a willingness to consider and value alternative viewpoints.
5. Leadership; Planning and Organizing: Given the short timeline, students must develop efficient plans for designing innovations. Inherent to the process is the need to determine where and how to gather information, developing and adhering to timelines, organizing tasks, and planning and organizing final presentations. They will learn how to encourage and elicit input from all those involved.
6. Creativity: Students will practice developing creative solutions to common problems, as well as learn to identify and highlight creative solutions that they see others doing

The goal of GCFSI is to create, test and enable the scaling of effective solutions and evidence-based approaches to a defined set of future critical global trend impacting food systems through the following objectives:

1. Provide decision support to improve data quality and access, as a way to promote evidence-based decision making in food systems.
2. Accelerate the creation, testing and scaling up of transformative innovations, technologies and approaches in food systems.
3. Create a multi-disciplinary network that shares knowledge, promotes learning, and builds mutual capacity in the area of food systems innovation.

To accomplish the above objectives, GCFSI established a regional innovation hub at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in Malawi representing a partnership among the GCFSI consortium and LUANAR, and by mutual agreement, the parties expect that the regional innovation hub at LUANAR will cooperate with GCFSI in accomplishing the above mentioned goal and objectives.
As such LUANAR specifically:

1. Collaborates with GCFSI in evaluating hypothesis and findings of literature reviews – such as the GCFSI developed white papers - on the impact of megatrends on food systems in the region.
2. Collaborate in the development and implementation of research through GCFSI innovation grants, including an integrated research effort in Malawi involving LUANAR and MSU faculty and students.
3. Collaborate with GCFSI faculty and students in implementing scalable innovative solutions and assist with scaling successful innovative solutions by helping establish partnership with private sector, developing business plans and technology commercialization.
4. Host GCFSI faculty and students, convening/hosting conference and workshops involving multi-sectors stakeholders and linking to other initiatives pertinent to the scope of GCFSI.
5. Develop and deliver educational and training programs necessary for future food systems professionals.