This methodological guide was initially developed and used in Latin America and the Caribbean-LAC (Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Dominican Republic), and was later improved during adaptation and use in eastern African (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia) through a South-South exchange of expertise and experiences. The aim of the methodological guide is to constitute an initial step in the empowerment of local communities to develop a local soil quality monitoring and decision-making system for better management of soil resources.
This book examines how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – through the lens of agribusiness, public policies, and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system involving many actors and interactions.
This book describes how the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been trying to improve markets for staple foods in Africa through its Market Access Programme. It describes 13 projects from eight countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) that the programme has supported. The book does not attempt to describe the cases in detail. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects in order to derive lessons from which the project managers, AGRA and other development organizations can learn.
KIT and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) published this joint publication in which farmers were put in the driver’s seat. Within the programme ‘farmer empowerment for innovation in smallholder agriculture’ (FEISA) farmers were provided tools and skills to enhance collaboration with private enterprises, as well as service providers, in multi stakeholder ‘innovation triangles’ within value chains for the benefit of smallholder farmers.
This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation.
This review studied a selection of projects from the Research Into Use (RIU) Africa portfolio: the Nyagatare maize platform in Rwanda; the cowpea platform in Kano state, Nigeria; the pork platform in Malawi, the Farm Input Promotions (FIPS) Best Bet in Kenya, and the Armyworm Best Bet in Kenya and Tanzania. For each of the selected projects, assessments were made on how it changed the capacity to innovate, the household level poverty impact, whether the intervention off ered value for money, and what were the main lessons learned.
The aim of this paper is to show the importance of monitoring genetic improvement programmes using the examples of an improvement programme for the Sahiwal breed in Kenya and a progeny testing scheme for Friesian cattle in Kenya. The paper is based on reports by Rege et al. (1992) and Rege and Wakhungu (1992) for the Sahiwal project and Rege (1991a and 1991b) for the progeny testing scheme for Friesian cattle.
This report refers to the workshop which was held on October 21-25, 2013 at ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya. The workshop involved a variety of sessions which made use of presentations, card exercises, group work and discussions to facilitate the engagement of the participants in sharing, learning, discussing and planning around CapDev in CGIAR. This report provides an overview of the workshop sessions, focusing mainly on the key discussion topics, results and next steps.
Recent interest in inclusive innovation to serve base-of-the-pyramid markets has so far produced relatively little evidence about the role of policy. Drawing on cases from Kenya's mobile phone sector that have successfully scaled innovations to poor consumers, we suggest that policy-making is not only present, but can also have a significant role in shaping and supporting inclusive innovation systems. In these cases, inclusive innovation has been built upon a reinforcing circle of adaptive innovation, dynamic competition, and presence of innovation intermediaries within poor communities.
The agricultural innovation systems approach emphasizes the collective nature of innovation and stresses that innovation is a co-evolutionary process, resulting from alignment of technical, social, institutional and organizational dimensions. These insights are increasingly informing interventions that focus on setting up multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as innovation platforms and networks, as mechanisms for enhancing agricultural innovation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.