This paper compares lessons learned from nine studies that explored institutional determinants of innovation towards sustainable intensification of West African agriculture. The studies investigated issues relating to crop, animal, and resources management in Benin, Ghana, and Mali.The studies showed that political ambitions to foster institutional change were often high (restoring the Beninese cotton sector and protecting Ghanaian farmers against fluctuating cocoa prices) and that the institutional change achieved was often remarkable.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships network which is typified by the FARA-led Integrated Agriculture Research for Development (IAR4D) of the SSA-Challenge Program is an innovation platform (IP) composed of stakeholders bound together by their individual interests in a shared commodity or outcome. The result from such innovation platforms is largely influenced by the strength of the network. In this paper, similarities within and across platforms are assessed using the simple matching procedure. Results indicate consistency in conduct of Innovation Platform activities.
Innovation systems can be defined in a variety of ways: they can be national, regional, sectoral, or technological. They all involve the creation, diffusion, and use of knowledge. Systems consist of components, relationships among these, and their characteristics or attributes. The focus of this paper is on the analytical and methodological issues arising from various system concepts. There are three issues that stand out as problematic. First, what is the appropriate level of analysis for the purpose at hand?
This paper argues that impact assessment research has not made more of a difference because the measurement of the economic impact has poor diagnostic power. In particular it fails to provide research managers with critical institutional lessons concerning ways of improving research and innovation as a process. Paper's contention is that the linear input-output assumptions of economic assessment need to be complemented by an analytical framework that recognizes systems of reflexive, learning interactions and their location in, and relationship with, their institutional context.
This article studies the impact of innovation platforms in Tanga Region, Tanzania, set up by the MilkIT dairy development project to intensify smallholder production through feed enhancement and value chain approaches. The conceptual framework used builds up from three socio-economic theories. The Structure-Conduct-Performance model of markets contributes its elegant assumption, linking the way markets are organized with how market actors behave, which has an influence on market performance.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there is increasing interest for the adaptation and use of the innovation systems approach to advance learning and development in the Agricultural Research and Development (ARD) sector. This crave is constrained by unavailability of a proven blue print that describe the paradigm shift from the linear approach and how such could function under different socio-economic, cultural and political climate.
Zimbabwe has a pluralistic agricultural extension system. In addition to the public extension service, donors contract private service providers to deliver extension services in specific project areas. This study assesses the impact of an outsourced extension service on rural households in the Mutasa district of Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, and examines the financial cost and benefit of this service. The extension service was delivered by a local agribusiness firm and funded by USAID. The study analyses survey data gathered from 94 client and 90 non-client rural households.
This paper identifies market failures that limit agricultural R&D for Africa and other resource-poor environments, and proposes a way to complement existing institutions with cash prizes for the dissemination of successful new technologies adopted by low-income farmers. The proposed prize institution would use agronomic experiments and farm surveys to document the value of innovations after their initial diffusion, and offer payments in proportion to estimated social benefits in target regions.
In this paper the authors provide climate smart agriculture (CSA) planners and implementers at all levels with a generic framework for evaluating and prioritising potential interventions. This entails an iterative process of mapping out recommendation domains, assessing adoption potential and estimating impacts. Through examples, related to livestock production in sub-Saharan Africa, they demonstrate each of the steps and how they are interlinked. The framework is applicable in many different forms, scales and settings.
This study identifies entry points for innovation for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems. An agricultural innovation systems approach is used to provide a holistic image of (relations between) constraints faced by different stakeholder groups, the dimensions and causes of these constraints, and intervention levels, timeframes and types of innovations needed. The authors aim at showing that constraints for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems are mainly of economic and institutional nature.