In Sub-Sahara Africa, adoption rates of improved crop varieties remain relatively low, which is partly due to farmers’ limited access to information. In smallholder settings, information often spreads through informal networks. Better understanding of such networks could potentially help to spur innovation and farmers’ exposure to new technologies. This study uses survey data from Tanzania to analyze social networks and their role for the spread of information about improved varieties of maize and sorghum.
Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) are seen as a promising vehicle to achieve agricultural development impacts. By increasing collaboration, exchange of knowledge and influence mediation among farmers, researchers and other stakeholders, MSPs supposedly enhance their ‘capacity to innovate’ and contribute to the ‘scaling of innovations’. The objective of this paper is to explore the capacity to innovate and scaling potential of three MSPs in Burundi, Rwanda and the South Kivu province located in the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
For agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS), social media presents a huge scope not just to communicate to the farmers better and with efficiency, but also to act as innovation brokers in Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). And not just for the organizations, social media has made it easier for farmers to communicate with extension professionals, experts and peers in real time. And with this increased potential to share views and ideas and easy access to information, discretion becomes important for organizations to maintain professionalism in a new social world.
In this paper, findings suggest that the uptake of social media is still in an early, exploratory phase associated with modest opportunities and relevant limitations of Web 2.0 mediated multi-stakeholder collaboration. Notably, there are gaps in giving and receiving feedback which are intrinsic to dyadic communication as well as innovation processes.
According to transition science, system innovation requires experimentation and social learning to explore the potential of innovations for sustainable development. However, the transition science literature does not elaborate much on the learning processes involved. Senge's Field of Change provides a more detailed approach to the role of learning and action in innovation. We linked the Field of Change to transition management literature in order to explore social learning in an agricultural innovation experiment in the Netherlands called the ‘New Mixed Farm’.
Social learning in multi-actor innovation networks is increasingly considered an important precondition for addressing sustainability in regional development contexts. Social learning is seen as a means for enabling stakeholders to take advantage of the diversity in perspectives, interests and values for generating more sustainable practices and policies. Although more and more research is done on the meaning and manifestations of social learning, particularly in the context of natural resource management, little is known about the social dynamics in the process of social learning.
The aim of this report is to provide a detailed review of documented social learning processes for climate changeand natural resource managementas described in peer-reviewed literature. Particular focus is on identifying (1) lessons and principles, (2) tools and approaches, (3) evaluation of social learning, as well as (4) concrete examples of impacts that social learning has contributed to.
This paper introduces a new research framework for social learning, to be able to derive ways to facilitate social learning. The authors report on an explorative interview study to substantiate the framework. One interesting conclusion was that hidden agenda’s were shown to undermine trust, which in turn undermined the social learning process. This explains the importance of openness for social learning. Research results show substantiate the research framework, and show that it can be used to derive methods to facilitate social learning.
We are facing complex societal problems such as climate change, human conflict, poverty and inequality, and need innovative solutions. Multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) are more and more seen as a critical way of coming to such innovative solutions. It is thought that when multiple stakeholders are able to meet, share experiences, learn together and contribute to decisions, new and innovative ways of dealing with problems are found and turned into action. Still, much remains to be understood about the role and effectiveness of social learning in multi-stakeholder settings.
Since 2012, hundreds of organisations across West Africa have shown a series of ten videos on Fighting striga and improving soil fertility to farmer groups and rural communities. This paper asks if a village would change its social structure just because they watched these videos? Field research in Mali revealed that the answer is yes, sometimes, especially if they watched the videos in groups and saw other farmers in the videos doing group activities.