This report reviews the evidence of impact of capacity strengthening on agricultural research for development (AR4D) in developing countries. The study was commissioned by DFID as part of the documentation process of the project Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA).
Governments of low-income countries and international development donors are increasing their funding for research at least in part on the assumption that research has positive impacts on socioeconomic development. Four pathways are commonly cited to describe how research will contribute to development: 1. Investment in research will drive economic growth; 2. Investment in research will increase human capital; 3. Investment in research will lead to the development of pro-poor products and technologies; 4.
The study evaluates the Department for International Development’s partnership with the World Health Organisation. It provides an assessment of both the relevance and appropriateness of the partnership and of the efficiency and effectiveness of DFID’s activities under the partnership. The study discusses the concept of partnership creating baselines for future monitoring and evaluation. The report is structured around the five evaluation criteria of relevance, appropriateness, unity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
This review is an information resource for development practitioners, development agencies and funders of development activities who have an interest in assessing capacity for agricultural innovation in developing countries, including the developing regions of sub-Saharan Africa. In the context that further investment in the agricultural capacity of developing countries is recognised as a development priority, the review explores what is known about the “tools” (i.e. concepts and methods) which are available to guide assessment of innovation capacity in these countries.
This synthesis report presents the outputs of the workshop organised by CTA at its headquarters in Wageningen, The Netherlands, 15-17 July 2008. The outputs are presented in two main parts, each corresponding to one of the workshop objectives, and ends with a section on the way forward as suggested by the workshop participants. It also includes a first attempt to come to a consolidated generic framework on AIS performance indicators, based on the outputs of the different working groups.
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.
As the name suggests, the original aim of the Rural Knowledge Network (RKN) was to make more information available specifically about markets, to smallholder farmers. The core idea was to provide information to farmers and traders about current market prices in different markets around the country. This was done by building a network of entrepreneurs who regularly collected the price information and sent it to a central collecting Internet platform facility.
This report provides a synthesis of all findings and information generated through a “stocktaking” process that involved a desk study of Prolinnova documents and evaluation reports, a questionnaire to 40 staff members of international organizations in agricultural research and development (ARD), self-assessment by the Country Platforms (CPs) and backstopping visits to five CPs. In 2014, the Prolinnova network saw a need to re-strategise in a changing context, and started this process by reviewing the activities it had undertaken and assessing its own functioning.
The project “Strengthening Community Resilience to Change: Combining Local Innovative Capacity with Scientific Research” (CLIC–SR), supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, was completed on 31 August 2016. During the four years since 2012, the Prolinnova Country Platforms in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda made large strides in: