Uganda pioneered the use of budget support operations known as Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) in the World Bank. PRSCs were designed to channel programmatic lending to support policy and institutional reforms in support of a country's Poverty Reduction Strategy, usually presented in the form of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). In the case of Uganda the PRSCs were designed as a series of annual credits supporting a three year rolling program of reforms, based on Uganda's version of a PRSC, which is known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) .
The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) implements participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) systems as a means of strengthening learning, self-reflection and facilitating institutional learning and change (ILAC) processes within Research and Development (R&D) institutions and local communities in Africa.
La rencontre des chercheurs qui s’interrogent sur l’efficacité de leurs interventions pour accompagner les acteurs dans les processus de changement constitue une occasion pour s’interroger sur les méthodes de recherche à développer lors de travaux réalisés avec les acteurs : recherche participative, « recherche-action », recherche intervention... L’auteur propose de présenter la démarche de recherche-action comme nouvelle.
The role of civil society in influencing public opinion towards more democratic and developmental approaches is now well-recognised in diverse fields such as health, education, livelihoods, issues relating to disadvantaged social groups and the environment. Yet, science and technology in India is predominantly seen as the preserve of the state, and more recently the market. In the linear model of innovation, civil society is seen at best as having a role in extension or the delivery of technology produced elsewhere.
This policy brief sets out the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of a learning-orientated monitoring and evaluation approach known as Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) and discusses options for learning-oriented interventions and policy research.
The purpose of this paper is to map some elements that can contribute to an IFAD strategy to stimulate and support pro-poor innovations. It is an initial or exploratory document that hopefully will add to an ongoing and necessary debate, and is not intended as a final position paper. The document is organized as follows.
There are divergent views on what capacity development might mean in relation to agricultural biotechnology. The core of this debate is whether this should involve the development of human capital and research infrastructure, or whether it should encompass a wider range of activities which also include developing the capacity to use knowledge productively. This paper uses the innovation systems concept to shed light on this discussion, arguing that it is innovation capacity rather than science and technology capacity that has to be developed.
This paper identifies market failures that limit agricultural R&D for Africa and other resource-poor environments, and proposes a way to complement existing institutions with cash prizes for the dissemination of successful new technologies adopted by low-income farmers. The proposed prize institution would use agronomic experiments and farm surveys to document the value of innovations after their initial diffusion, and offer payments in proportion to estimated social benefits in target regions.
This report documents the history of the systems of rice intensification (SRI, for short) in India in the last few years and presents some of the institutional changes and challenges that SRI throws up. The first part looks at the complex and continuing evolution of SRI in India and presents SRI as an innovation in process and not as a completed product. Farmers and other actors are continuously shaping it through their practice. Part II focuses on insights of the innovation systems framework looking closely at the nature and quality of linkages of the various actors.
This Economic and Sector Work paper, “Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems,” was initiated as a result of the international workshop, “Development of Research Systems to Support the Changing Agricultural Sector,” organized by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank in June 2004 in Washington, DC.