TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was selected as Recipient Organization by FAO to facilitate TAP implementation in Africa. This is mainly due to its position as the umbrella organization bringing together and forming coalitions of major regional stakeholders in agricultural research and development.
The brochure summarizes main features and goals of the EU funded CDAIS project, jointly implemented by FAO and AGRINATURA to support the Action Plan of the Tropical Agriculture Platform.
La brochure résume les principales caractéristiques et objectifs du projet CDAIS financé par l'UE, et qui est mis en œuvre conjointement par AGRINATURA et la FAO pour soutenir le Plan d'action de la Plate-forme pour l'agriculture tropicale (TAP).
El folleto resume las principales características y objetivos del proyecto CDAIS, financiado por la UE, y ejecutado conjuntamente por la FAO y AGRINATURA para apoyar el Plan de Acción de la TAP.
Year 1 activities were mainly on establishment of the project team at the global and country levels. A Partnership Agreement between AGRINATURA-EEIG and FAO was formalized and signed, and practical coordination mechanisms established. A Specific Power of Attorney between AGRINATURA-EEIG members within CDAIS was created, agreed and signed by all members, serving as the consortium agreement among members.
This paper argues that Dutch-funded capacity development projects in developing countries for tertiary agricultural education organisations as they are currently carried out are not able to successfully achieve the sustained changes required. That is, changes in how an organisation functions, its cultural norms and rules, and also in how it interacts within wider networks. Rather, long-term institutional change is needed.
Innovation platforms are groups of individuals or stakeholder representatives with different backgrounds and interests. They come together to diagnose problems, identify opportunities, and find ways to achieve their goals. When innovation platforms are set up by development projects, their processes are usually facilitated by the support organization.
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.
There is increasing policy, practice and academic interest in “inclusive innovation”. In simple terms, this is the means by which new goods and services are developed for and/or by those who have been excluded from the development mainstream; particularly the billions living on lowest incomes. However, there are many competing perspectives on inclusive innovation, which this paper resolves into an integrated ‘ladder’ model of different levels of inclusive innovation.
This study examines the influence of an extra-curricular educational program on children's knowledge and cultural valuation of wild food plants, which are an important component of their diets. This program aims to reinforce children's traditional knowledge and values around biological resources in Wayanad, India's Western Ghats, encouraging tribal and non-tribal children to learn from each other and from their own communities. Results show that the educational program has enhanced children's ability to identify selected wild food plants.