This paper shares the first results of an ongoing collaborative action research in which ten development organisations explored different Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) approaches with the aim of dealing more effectively with complex processes of social change. There are four reasons why we think this paper may be of interest: 1) The paper illustrates a practical example of action research whereby the organisations themselves are becoming the researchers.
This paper briefly reviews three conceptual frameworks: namely, the national agricultural research system (NARS), the agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) and the agricultural innovation system (AIS) concepts. Next, the paper reviews the definition of ‘innovation’ and proposes that agricultural innovation can occur at four different but interlinked domains.
RIU is a research and development programme designed to put agricultural research into use for developmental purposes and to conduct research on how to do this. The programme is funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). It follows earlier investments by DFID in agricultural and natural resources research, supported through its renewable natural resources research strategy (RRNRRS). While this strategy delivered high-quality research, the uptake of this research and its impact on social and economic progress was modest.
This paper aims to map the experience of the RIU Asia projects and draw out the main innovation management tactics being observed while laying the groundwork for further research on this topic. It provides a framework to help analyse the sorts of innovation management tasks that are becoming important. This framework distinguishes four elements of innovation management: (i) Functions (ii) Actions (iii) Toolsand (iv) Organisational Format.
This paper reflects on the experience of the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in Asia. It reconfirms much of what has been known for many years about the way innovation takes place and finds that many of the shortcomings of RIU in Asia were precisely because lessons from previous research on agricultural innovation were “not put into use” in the programme’s implementation. However, the experience provides three important lessons for donors and governments to make use of agricultural research: (i) Promoting research into use requires enabling innovation.
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental activities of government programmes, NGOs and development projects.
Whereas Irish potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a major staple food in many countries, it is one of the priority value chain crops under the Rwanda’s Crop Intensification Program (CIP). The crop is more important in the northern and northwestern than other parts of Rwanda. After plantain and cassava, potato is the third most important staple cultivated by 52.9% of the households in Rwanda.
This paper examines the design and implementation of a package of capacity strengthening interventions undertaken between March 2007 and March 2011, which aimed to enhance the performance of the national agricultural research system (NARS) in Lesotho. It also identifies some initial outcomes from these interventions and makes recommendations to sustain the process of organisational and institutional change and build on the results that have been achieved.
Early applications of the innovation systems framework to developing-country agriculture suggest opportunities for more intensive and extensive analysis. There is ample scope for empirical studies to make greater use of the theoretical content available in the literature, and to employ more diverse methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Further, there is room to improve the relevance of empirical studies to the analysis of public policies that support science, technology, and innovation, as well as to policies that promote poverty reduction and economic growth.
This paper discusses a range of approaches and benchmarks that can guide future design of value chain impact evaluations. Twenty studies were reviewed to understand the status and direction of value chain impact evaluations. A majority of the studies focus on evaluating the impact of only a few interventions, at several levels within the value chains. Few impact evaluations are based on well-constructed, well-conceived comparison groups. Most of them rely on use of propensity score matching to construct counterfactual groups and estimate treatment effects.