There have been repeated calls for a ‘new professionalism’ for carrying out agricultural research for development since the 1990s. At the centre of these calls is a recognition that for agricultural research to support the capacities required to face global patterns of change and their implications on rural livelihoods, requires a more systemic, learning focused and reflexive practice that bridges epistemologies and methodologies.
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.
This paper analyses a biotechnology-focused project which aims to promote the development and adoption of tissue culture bananas by small-scale farmers in Kenya. The paper highlights the generation of several important narratives that are used to justify the development and dissemination of this technology. First, a disaster narrative, a series of claims regarding rural livelihoods and banana production in Kenya, is generated. This creates a political and technical space for the creation of a new science that can solve these problems.
The private sector’s presence in agricultural advisory services worldwide has been on the increase for over three decades. This trend has also been observed in the Mantaro Valley (Peru), in a context of dairy family farming. The objective of the communication is to analyse the modalities of advisory services privatization and assess the consequences of this privatization for the farmers and their livestock systems. Data were collected through input suppliers, different types of advisers and producers interviews.
Este documento busca obtenern un mejor conocimiento sobre los mencionados mecanismos de articulación a mercados que sirvan de insumos para un diálogo informado entre los actores públicos y privados, así como para el intercambio de aprendizajes entre los miembros del Grupo de Diálogo Andino, por lo que se ha decidido la realización de un estudio de identificación y caracterización inicial de los mismos, cuyos resultados sean presentados ante el Grupo y sirvan además como experiencias de referencia en análisis posteriores de mayor profundidad
El presente documento realiza un análisis del proceso de instalación del Grupo de Diálogo Rural (GDR) Perú, desplegado durante el año 2017 en el marco del proyecto Jóvenes rurales, territorios y oportunidades: una estrategia de diálogo de políticas (Rimisp-FIDA 2017-2019).
En síntesis, el presente documento tiene un carácter marcadamente exploratorio. Por lo tanto, el objetivo es modesto pues no se pretende medir o evaluar los efectos, sino identificarlos y describirlos en la medida que los actores del proceso los signifiquen como tales. Esto permitirá, a futuro, estudios más profundos sobre la base de una mejor compresión de las lógicas intrínsecas de los procesos de innovación. El documento está organizado en cuatro apartados. El primero resume las aproximaciones conceptuales relevantes sobre el tema.
The farmer field school (FFS) concept has been widely adopted, and such schools have the reputation of strengthening farmers’ capacity to innovate. Although their impact has been studied widely, what is involved in their scaling and in their becoming an integral part of agricultural innovation systems has been studied much less. In the case of the Sustainable Tree Crops Programme in Cameroon, we investigate how a public–private partnership (PPP) did not lead to satisfactory widespread scaling in the cocoa innovation system.
The paper explores the strength of social networks in the agricultural innovation systems (AISs) in Ghana and the effect of AISs on adoption of improved farm technology. The paper uses social network analysis (SNA) tools to identify, map and analyze the AISs and the two-stage Heckman selection model. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods allows testing the differential effects of social networks on technology adoption in the Ghananian Plantain Sector
In this paper, it is explored the strategic role of Multi-stakeholder processes (MSP) in agricultural innovations and how ithas impacted livelihood assets’(LAs) capital dynamics ofstakeholders in platforms in West Africa.The authors demonstrate how LA capitalsand socio-economic dynamics induced by MSP can enhancecassava production efficiency but also create opportunities andchallenges that influence platform dynamics and impacts. We usea multistage sampling procedure and sustainable livelihoodmodel (e.g.