This book contains a collection of papers that discuss the experience of an Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) capacity building program in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The program was the AusAID-funded Agricultural Research and Development Support Facility (ARDSF), which ran for fi ve years from 2007 to 2012, and which sought to improve the delivery of services by agricultural research organisations to smallholder farmers.
This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example. Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers in developing countries’ agriculture. It concludes that innovation brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such players in the innovation system.
This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation.
The question of how agricultural research can best be used for developmental purposes is a topic of some debate in developmental circles. The idea that this is simply a question of better transfer of ideas from research to farmers has been largely discredited. Agricultural innovation is a process that takes a multitude of different forms, and, within this process, agricultural research and expertise are mobilised at different points in time for different purposes. This paper uses two key analytical principles in order to find how research is actually put into use.
The emergence of a globalised knowledge economy, and the contemporary views of innovation capacity that this trend enables and informs, provides a new context in which development assistance to agricultural research and development needs to be considered. The main argument in this paper, which focuses on The Netherlands, is that development assistance should use this emerging scenario to identify niches where inputs can add value to the R&D investments of others, particularly in activities that help wire up innovation systems, linking R&D to other activities and actors in society.
Communication is a crucial part of facilitating the process of innovation within an innovation platform. It comprises a broad range of practices and approaches which include information management, publishing, use of information and communication technologies, communication for development, knowledge sharing and knowledge management. Its goal is not just to produce or disseminate more information, but rather to use communication processes to power changes identified by the platform.
Research, extension, and advisory services are some of the most knowledge-intensive elements of agricultural innovation systems. They are also among the heaviest users of information communication technologies (ICTs). This module introduces ICT developments in the wider innovation and knowledge systems as well as explores drivers of ICT use in research and extension.
On 15 November 2012, as part of the IFAD East and Southern Africa regional meeting in Addis Ababa, ILRI was asked to convene and facilitate a 1 hour session on ways that CGIAR and IFAD could collaborate. The session drew on contributions from different CGIAR centres; it involved speakers from ILRI, IWMI and ICARDA. It provided a very good, but short, opportunity to make connections between some CGIAR staff and IFAD and project staff; several individual follow up conversations were triggered.
The presentation (www.slideshare.net/ILRI/cgiar-and-ifad-sharing-and-scaling-up-innovations) reflected on current collaboration experiences between IFAD and the CGIAR, it introduced the ‘renewed’ research for development focus of the CGIAR and its multi-center Research Programs and it explored ideas for future collaboration.
Este artículo explora, partiendo de la base de una perspectiva de “sistemas de innovación”, algunas oportunidades promisorias para los especialistas en información y comunicación.