Successful cases of innovation invariably demonstrate a range of partnerships, alliances and network-like arrangements that connect together knowledge users, knowledge producers and others involved in enabling innovation in the market, policy and civil society arenas. With this comes the realisation that public agricultural research needs to strengthen links to a wider set of players from the private and civil society sectors and, of course, farmers themselves. Public agricultural extension services have traditionally played the role of linking farmers to technology. However, recent studies that view this role as one of innovation brokering point to the fact that it involves a range of innovation management tasks that go beyond simply linking to sources of researchbased knowledge and include: linking to input and output markets, network development, conflict resolution, and helping negotiate changes in the policy environment, working practices, standards and regulations and financing arrangements. But who should perform this linking task and what forms of brokering really matter? Studies in the Netherlands point to the emergence of specialist brokering organisations, which include privatised public agencies and civil society organisations that rely on a mixture of public and private funding. This section presents the findings from an agricultural research-into-use support programme operating in Asia and Africa, which has focused on finding ways to embed research into the wider set of networks involved in innovation. This has included the establishment of pilot specialist agencies to broker linkages for innovation
LenCD has prepared a joint statement on results and capacity development (presented in this publication), which stresses that meaningful, sustainable results are premised on proper investments in capacity development and that these results materialize at different levels and at different...
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD),...
TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was...
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become...
PAEPARD supports/facilitates three aflatoxin-related research consortia: (a) Stemming aflatoxin pre- and post-harvest waste in the groundnut value chain in Malawi and Zambia; (b) Developing strategies to reduce fungal toxins contamination for improved food sufficiency, nutrition and incomes along the maize...