The poor performance of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa is known to be largely due to the lack of effective and client- responsive agricultural research and development that could generate appropriate technologies and innovations to stimulate the agricultural development process. As a contribution to address this challenge, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), with support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), developed a project for Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa (SCARDA).

The question of how agricultural research can best be used for developmental purposes is a topic of some debate in developmental circles. The idea that this is simply a question of better transfer of ideas from research to farmers has been largely discredited. Agricultural innovation is a process that takes a multitude of different forms, and, within this process, agricultural research and expertise are mobilised at different points in time for different purposes. This paper uses two key analytical principles in order to find how research is actually put into use.