This review seeks to assess the usefulness of innovation systems approaches in the context of the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) in guiding research agendas, generating knowledge and use in improving food security and nutrition, reducing poverty and generating cash incomes for resource-poor farmers. The report draws on a range of case studies across sub-Saharan Africa to compare and contrast the reasons for success from which lessons can be learned.
In order to facilitate improved returns to research and development in African agriculture, the innovation systems approach which engenders the involvement of multiple stakeholders in its innovation pathway, has been proposed. Despite the potential of this approach, the understanding of its implementation and particularly of the process of setting up its multi-stakeholder platform is still largely lacking. Yet, this platform is critical to the success and sustainability of the operations of the platform.
This blended learning program lead by ILRI draws on the practice briefs, the workshop experience and materials from partners including IITA, Wageningen University, ICRAF and FARA. It comprises an online component of 14 modules and a 3-day workshop. The final component of the course is a face-to-face workshop which provides learners with opportunities to apply their newly acquired knowledge to the challenges of their own platform or that of their peers. The workshop features role plays and collaborative group work based on actual scenarios.
This paper discusses innovation in low and middle-income countries, focusing on the role it has played in local and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lessons from this effort for how innovation might be harnessed to address wider development and humanitarian challenges by mobilising resources, improving processes, catalysing collaboration and encouraging creative and contextually grounded approaches. The paper also examines how international development and humanitarian organisations can improve their support for local and national innovation efforts.
The failure of the linear and non-participatory Agricultural Research and Development approaches to increase food security among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa has prompted researchers to introduce an Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) concept. The IAR4D concept uses Innovation Platforms (IPs) to embed agricultural research and development organizations in a network to undertake multidisciplinary and participatory research.
The OECD InDeF team developed a portfolio approach to innovation. A portfolio approach takes a balcony view on innovation which helps organizations align innovation processes, resources and performance with organizational objectives and enables them to track innovation with a view to scaling. Coached by the OECD team, Enabel colleagues in Benin, Morocco and Palestine piloted this portfolio approach by reviewing their current innovation supporting activities and investments against a set of key criteria.
For most development organisations and funders, innovation remains a sprawling collection of activities, often energetic, but largely uncoordinated. To a dregree, this has also been the case for Iceland's development co-operation. Iceland, a comparatively small but energetic player in the international development co-operation system, provided the equivalent of 0.28% (roughly 67 million Euro) of it 2021 gross national income towards Official Development Assistance.
One-fifth of the innovative solutions to fight the Covid-19 pandemic have emerged from low and middle-income countries, and these responses offer promising insights for how we think about, manage, and enable innovation. As the international community now faces the historic challenge of vaccinating the world, more attention and resources must be directed to the innovators who are developing technically novel, contextually relevant, and socially inclusive alternatives to mainstream innovation management practices.
The term 'Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D),' first coined in 2003, acknowledges the complexity of the agricultural system and the need to bring together not only different related research disciplines but also multiple actors (private sector, public sector, producer organisation and policymakers) to find joint solutions to the challenges of agricultural innovation. The book is produced in response traces the evolution of the concept back to its roots in an impressive range of theories and approaches from diverse disciplines, such as constructivism, participatory acti
The present study was commissioned to carry out an update of the “Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D)” with a view to evaluating the quantitative and qualitative impact of the several outcomes on stakeholders in the The sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Program (SSA CP). The present study is also to validate the hypotheses that the IAR4D (i) works (ii) delivers more benefits than the conventional R&D method and (iii) can be scaled out and up beyond the current area of operation.