The dynamic nature of climate and its impacts on agriculture is rendering most of the existing adaptation and coping strategies unsupportive in many regions.
Smallholder dairy farmers have the challenges of accessing timely and reliable agricultural information, and this limits them from realizing maximum farm output. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a farming extension tool by smallholder farmers has the potential to reverse the scenario and improve farmers’ outputs and incomes leading to increased welfare.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed a web-based Rift Valley fever (RVF) Early Warning Decision Support Tool (RVF DST), which integrates near real-time RVF risk maps with geospatial data, historical and current RVF disease events from EMPRES Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i) and expert knowledge on RVF eco-epidemiology.
The building of sustainable innovation capabilities in Africa requires an innovation system capable of producing, disseminating and using new knowledge. This paper assesses the process of constructing the National Innovation System (NIS) in Rwanda. It is posited that consensus on and acceptance of the concept of NIS among stakeholders is crucial in the early process of constructing an efficient and dynamic innovation system. Primary empirical data are presented for the case of Rwanda and analyzed in a regional context.
The well-being of the rural population globally has been associated with the performance and resilience of the agriculture sector. The sector continually requires new needs-based knowledge and technologies. It has become necessary to empower the rural communities through a wider bottom-up system that directly addresses their needs. This paper explores the application of little-used Participatory Livelihood Analysis for the adoption and up-scaling of its use in the assessment of agricultural-extension-needs for disadvantaged rural communities.
Globalization, urbanization and new market demands - together with ever-increasing quality and safety requirements - are putting significantly greater pressures on agrifood stakeholders in the world. The ability to respond to new challenges and opportunities is important not just for producers but also for industries in developing countries. This paper aims to present what "innovation response capacity" entails, especially for natural resourcebased industries in a developing country context.
A fragmented digital agriculture ecosystem has been linked to the slow scale-out of digital platforms and other digital technology solutions for agriculture. This has undermined the prospects of digitalizing agriculture and increasing sectoral outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. We conceptualized an aggregator platform for digital services in agriculture as a special form of digital platforms that can enhance the value and usage of digital technologies at the industry level. Little is known about how such a platform can create value as a new service ecology in agriculture.
Classical innovation adoption models implicitly assume homogenous information flow across farmers, which is often not realistic. As a result, selection bias in adoption parameters may occur. We focus on tissue culture (TC) banana technology that was introduced in Kenya more than 10 years ago. Up till now, adoption rates have remained relatively low.
With support from The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), through a call for proposal, Hello Tractor an agriculture technology social enterprise has been selected to implement ICT-enabled smallholder mechanisation services with the objective to create jobs for youth across Nigeria and Kenya over a one-year period. Hello Tractor has a bold vision to create sustainable value for tractor owners and to radically transform how the smallholder agricultural ecosystem interacts with and derives value from technology.
With the commercialization of agriculture, women are increasingly disadvantaged because of persistent gender disparities in access to productive resources. Farmer collective action that intends to improve smallholder access to markets and technology could potentially accelerate this trend. Here, we use survey data of small-scale banana producers in Kenya to investigate the gender implications of recently established farmer groups. Traditionally, banana has been a women’s crop in Kenya. Our results confirm that the groups contribute to increasing male control over banana.