This is the first chapter of the book "Innovation platforms for agricultural development: Evaluating the mature innovation platforms landscape". It introduces the background, case study competition process, case study characterization and readers’ guide, and book outline. Characterization of the case studies includes their geographical spread, age and life stage of the platforms, and specific information on the multi-stakeholder processes, the content matter, platform support functions, and outcomes and impacts.
The Great Lakes region of Central Africa is an area abundant in hills, people and conflicts. Its high altitude and cooler climate make it ideal for agriculture. But soils have been exhausted, spare land is no longer available, and farm households in parts of this region rank among the most food insecure and malnourished on earth. Years of civil conflict have moreover paralyzed agricultural advisory and extension services and resulted in poor access to markets.
Innovation platforms are fast becoming part of the mantra of agricultural research and development projects and programs with an innovation objective.
Agricultural extension in sub-Saharan Africa has often been criticised for its focus on linear knowledge transfer, and limited attention to systemic approaches to service delivery. Currently, the region is experiencing a new-ICT revolution and there are high expectations of new-ICTs to enhance interaction and information exchange in extension service delivery. Using an innovation systems perspective, we distinguish the roles demand-articulation, matching demand and supply, and innovation process management for innovation-intermediaries.
Maize production is of critical importance to smallholder farmers in Ghana. Various factors limit the productivityof smallholder maize farming systems undergirded by the lack of capital for critical investments both at the farmand at national policy levels. Using a value chain approach, this diagnostic study explains how a complex configuration of actor interaction within an institutionally and agro-ecologically challenged value chain leads tothe enduring absence of maize farming credit support.
The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which systems approaches to innovation are reflected in the crop protection literature and how such approaches are used. A systematic literature review is conducted to study the relation between crop protection and systems approaches to innovation in 107 publications. The analysis of the crop protection literature demonstrates that only a small fraction is systems-oriented as compared to the bulk of publications with a technology-oriented approach.
Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) have been playing an increasing role in interventions aiming to generate and scale innovations in agricultural systems. However, the contribution of MSPs in achieving innovations and scaling has been varied, and many factors have been reported to be important for their performance. This paper aims to provide evidence on the contribution of MSPs to innovation and scaling by focusing on three developing country cases in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda.
A platform of farmers, retailers and service providers, civil society organisations, NGOs, government officials, and researchers improves livelihoods in Rwanda. Through interaction and collaboration, these groups experiment with various technological and institutional innovations, thereby tackling local agricultural challenges. This experience illustrates the importance of institutionalising a space where knowledge can be co-created
Despite the positive attributions ascribed to Digital Platforms (DPs), empirical studies that explore the role of DPs in smallholder credit access are lacking, particularly that which takes into account the dynamics of trust in complex actor interactions in the value chain. Consequently, it remains unclear whether, and how DPs influence trust and actor cooperation in value chain financing of maize production in Ghana.
Xanthomonas Wilt of Banana (BXW) is a complex problem in the African Great Lakes Region that is affecting the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers. Since the first disease reports from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2001, BXW has been studied widely. The majority of these studies focus on the technological or biophysical dimensions, while aspects and influence of socio-cultural, economic and institutional dimensions only recently started to gain attention.