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.
This book describes how the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been trying to improve markets for staple foods in Africa through its Market Access Programme. It describes 13 projects from eight countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) that the programme has supported. The book does not attempt to describe the cases in detail. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects in order to derive lessons from which the project managers, AGRA and other development organizations can learn.
The main goal of this report is to provide a brief summary of land-use change in Amazonia within the focus countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. This report will mainly focus on the analysis and discussion of land-use change status and trends since 1970’s, a period when considerable changes started to be evident. Analyses were supported from a literature review and land use databases and maps for Andean countries (CIAT) and Brazil (INPE).
This policy brief presents, explains and illustrates the five key recommendations that came out of the joint learning process during the JOLISAA project: 1. Build on innovation “in the social wild”; 2. Combine local and external knowledge and ideas to enhance innovative capacity; 3. Encourage access to diverse value chains to lower the innovation risks; 4. Support unpredictable innovation processes; 5. Address the multiple dimensions of innovation.
This paper has been prepared under the guidelines provided by the TAP Secretariat at the FAO, as a contribution to the G20 initiative TAP, which includes near 40 partners and is facilitated by FAO. Its purpose is to provide a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation, with capacity gaps identified and analyzed, including recommendations to strengthen agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and draft policy recommendations to address the capacity gaps.
This book documents a unique series of 19 case studies where agricultural biotechnologies were used to serve the needs of smallholders in developing countries. They cover different regions, production systems, species and underlying socio-economic conditions in the crop (seven case studies), livestock (seven) and aquaculture/fisheries (five) sectors. Most of the case studies involve a single crop, livestock or fish species and a single biotechnology.
The agricultural innovation systems approach emphasizes the collective nature of innovation and stresses that innovation is a co-evolutionary process, resulting from alignment of technical, social, institutional and organizational dimensions. These insights are increasingly informing interventions that focus on setting up multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as innovation platforms and networks, as mechanisms for enhancing agricultural innovation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
The report specifically analyses the NIS in Peru and Colombia in the coffee and dairy sectors due to their economic importance for both countries and the large percentage of small producers in these sectors. In order to analyse the NIS, we have utilised an innovations systems approach to form the analytical framework. This framework focuses on four main areas – understanding the actors in the NIS, their roles and attitudes, the patterns of interaction of these actors, and the enabling environment with a focus on small producer inclusion.
To respond to threats of climate change, Benin has joined the international community in the development and implementation of climate policies.
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.