The paper takes a critical look at two key interventions identified to deliver the PAEPARD capacity strengthening strategy. Firstly, the training of a pool of agricultural innovation facilitators (AIF) to broker relations between relevant stakeholders for the consolidation of effective consortia. PAEPARD envisaged the role of AIF as to support both the face-to-face and virtual (via skype, email or social media) engagement of partners in capacity strengthening processes.
Ce document analyse de façon critique deux interventions majeures identifiées pour mettre en œuvre la stratégie de renforcement des capacités de PAEPARD. La première intervention est la formation d’un vivier de facilitateurs de l’innovation agricole (FIA) pour assurer une médiation entre les acteurs concernés et, ainsi, consolider des consortiums efficaces. PAEPARD prévoyait que les FIA encouragent l’engagement virtuel (par l’intermédiaire de Skype, d’e-mails ou des réseaux sociaux) et en personne des partenaires dans des processus de renforcement des capacités.
Despite efforts over recent years to improve the status of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, little change has been noted, due partially to the fact that efforts have come from individual entities, which had short-term funding or lacked the necessary expertise to scale up research outputs. Disconnect between researchers and end-users has further hindered the success of such efforts.
Malgré les efforts déployés ces dernières années pour améliorer la situation de l’agriculture en Afrique subsaharienne, peu de changements ont été observés. Cet insuccès est dû, en partie, au fait que ces efforts ont été consentis par diverses entités de petite taille, aux capacités de financement à court terme et sans l’expertise nécessaire pour diffuser les résultats de leurs travaux de recherche. De plus, ces initiatives ont aussi pâti de la déconnexion entre la recherche et les utilisateurs finaux.
The nature of the issues around which Agricultural Research for Development (ARD) partnerships are formed requires a different way of conceptualizing and thinking to that commonly found in many agricultural professionals. This brief clarifies the components of a system of interest to an ARD partnership.
Networks and organizations need to find ways to be more effective in pursuing their objectives and thus seek to “learn” to be able to respond, innovate and adapt to complex, changing social and environmental conditions, thus bringing about social change. An essential capacity for ARD (Agricultural Research for Development) partnerships is therefore the ability to reflect and learn. Learning is not simply about increasing knowledge and skills or changing attitudes; it is about making sense of complexity to act more effectively.
This brief illustrates the different forms of knowledge, and the ways to create and manage it.
As calls for bolstering environmental services on croplands have grown more insistent during the past two decades, the search for ways to foster sustainable, reduced input agriculture has become more urgent. In this context authors re-examine by means of a meta-analysis the argument, first proposed by Robert McC. Netting, that small scale, mixed crop – livestock farming, a common livelihood among poor rural peoples, encourages environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.
Innovations play a significant role in the primary sector (i.e., agriculture, fisheries and forestry), ensuring a greater performance towards bioeconomy and sustainability. Innovation is being progressively applied to examining the organization of joint technological, social, and institutional modernizations in the primary sector. Exploring the governance of actor relations, potential policies, and support structures is crucial in the phase of innovation, e.g., during research activities, often applied at the national or sectorial scale.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are a form of private governance sometimes used to manage the social and environmental impacts of supply chains. This work argue that there is a potential tension between input and output legitimacy in MSIs. Input legitimacy requires facilitating representation from a wide range of organizations with heterogeneous interests. This work, however, faces collective action problems that could lead to limited ambitions, lowering output legitimacy.