Six technical cooperation projects were selected by the platform M-BoSs: building on the successes of Marketplace which aims at potencializing and expanding good results obtained in projects successfully concluded at the first stage of the program, the Agricultural Innovation Marketplace (MKTPlace). The projects bring action and technologies to be adapted towards the development of tropical agriculture in eight African countries: Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, as well as Brazil, which is also a beneficiary of such cooperation. The Brazil-Africa partnership has come a long way, and the contributions for the two parties, in terms of the exchange of knowledge, experiences or technological solutions, is an observable fact. The M-BoSs technical cooperation platform is one of the most recent initiatives in this aspect, coordinated by Embrapa in partnership with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the British Department for International Development (DfID) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). To discuss the first steps for the projects, on February 13 - 17, the institutions that have partnered in the M-BoSs, the African and Brazilian co-leaders of each project, and the main researchers from each team have participated in the Annual M-BoSs Forum 2017, in Brasília, DF, Brazil. The Forum hallmarks the beginning of the projects and also intends to strengthen the technical cooperation action and knowledge sharing between the institutions and the teams. The six projects approach different areas of interest such as soil fertility, food security, honey production, and plant and animal production, among others, and in each project an Embrapa research center will work in partnership with a research institution from each country. Thomas Giblin, DfID 's senior advisor for international development in Brazil, Olewole Fatunbi and Jonas Mugabe, from FARA, and Kate Kuo, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have participated in the meeting. Embrapa is represented by the researcher Paulo Eduardo de Melo, from the technical cooperation area of Embrapa's Secretariat for International Affairs (SRI) and operational supervisor of the M-BoSs platform. Other participants included representatives from other 10 Embrapa units, and from SRI and ABC. The representative from FARA, Olewole Fatunbi, highlights that M-BoSs is a natural step after the MKTPlace. “What makes M-Boss a very important partner for Fara is that it is going to take technologies and knowledge for innovation generated throughout three years of the Marketplace and expand them, providing a more holistic view of agriculture in those countries and in the African continent." For Fatunbi, this union of knowledge and thoughts, in the context of agricultures that are as close as Brazil's and Africa's in terms of climate, people and some cultural issues, is a mutual benefit for both sides. As the DfID representative Thomas Giblin explains, the Marketplace tested ideas and possibilities for technologies in their projects. Now, the M-BoSs includes the launch of what he calls " pilot-projects" with larger scale and involving more countries to create feasible models in the whole of Africa. He also stresses the importance of this stage of project implementation to identify the really major challenges to scale up such models in Africa. “It takes adaptation to economic, gender, and cultural structures in each country. Africa needs this agricultural change, considering that the continent has a population that continues to grow without suitable nutrition. It is necessary to find economically viable models to meet such demand, and thus reach the sustainable development goals to which the entire world is committed”. One of the participating researchers from a project team, Murillo Freire Júnior, from Embrapa Food Technology, also underscores the aspect of the exchange of knowledge and experiences that the projects of the then MKTPlace, and now of the M-BoSs, allow. According to him, it is essential to understand the reality of African countries to use the technology that has already been consolidated at Embrapa in way that meets the real needs of local productions. This, he explains, is due to the fact the level of development in agriculture is not always the same. “We have to consider that they are different realities and learn how to deal with it in the best way for both”. That is a point Fatunbi and Giblin reiterate when they describe the cooperation with Embrapa. For them, the differential in this cooperation has been the fact the Corporation has this understanding of the differences and that, jointly with African research institutions, it is building adapted technologies rather than just transferring them without caution. “Half a century ago, Brazil's conditions were similar to agriculture in Africa today. Which makes it another opportunity to take this knowledge to us. “It is as if they said, let's work together and we'll help you have the success model that we had. An important benefit for both”, said Fatunbi. About M-BoSs The projects that integrate M-BoSs derived from initiatives in the scope of the MKTPlace, the Agricultural Innovation Marketplace, an international technical cooperation initiative coordinated by Embrapa, in partnership with international institutions. In operation since 2010, the MKTPlace was recognized in 2016 by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), during the Global South-South Development Expo, as one of the most effective cooperation strategies at a global level. In the M-BoSs' case, in March 2016 the first call for projects was open, and the candidates were only those that had already been finished and successful in the MKTPlace. The intention is to thus potencialize and expand such good results. The MKTPlace qualified 30 projects concluded by 2015 to run for the M-BoSs call. From that group, 21 presented pre-proposals and, after that, 11 were selected for the proposal stage. Finally, six projects were selected for implementation within the new platform. The list of selected projects can be accessed in the MKTPlace's website (www.mktplace.org). Each of the six selected projects will receive between 600,000 and 700,000 dollars in the course of three years. The selected project proposals aim to contribute to sustainable development and improved quality of life for smallholders. List of M-BoSs approved projects: • Linking knowledge to Action: Co-developing best-bet options for integrated soil fertility management, increased profitability and poverty reduction in agricultural landscapes of Africa (ICRAF, Kenya; Embrapa Soils). • Community based honeybee breeding for sustainable food security among rural households (Mekelle University, Ethiopia; Embrapa Acre). • Scaling-up of the Benefits of Rhizobium Inoculant Technology among Smallholder Legume Farmers in Northern Ghana (CSIR, Ghana; Embrapa Agrobiology) • Up-scaling millet grain sourdough technology and extruded snacks for sustainable livelihood in West Africa (Federal University of Abeokuta, Nigeria; Embrapa Food Technology) • Out scaling of community-based breeding programs: attractive and innovative approach to improving the lives of smallholders in low input systems (ICARDA, Ethiopia; Embrapa Goats and Sheep) • Poverty alleviation and food security in Africa through the implementation of small-scale technologies in integrated crop-livestock systems (NARO, Uganda; Embrapa Mid-North) Translation: Mariana de Lima Medeiros