The markets and value chains approach has recently become fashionable in agricultural development interventions. So too have innovation platforms. This brief shows how innovation platforms can be a useful vehicle to promote market development. It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.
One of the most important things that innovation platforms do is to build the capacity of their members to innovate. Some key elements of innovation capacity include: self-organization, learning new skills, changing mindsets, valuing others’ roles in innovation, having a holistic view, being able to adapt to changing situations, creating new ideas, recognizing opportunities, being proactive, using indigenous ideas, and looking to the future. This brief uses the analogy of a traditional African cooking pot to explain how innovation capacity is developed within an innovation platform.
Facilitation of innovation is a flexible and adaptive process during which facilitators manage dialogue and stimulate collective problem analysis by multiple stakeholders to overcome challenges or make use of opportunities. The brief describes what facilitation is about, facilitators' functions and roles, skills and attributes, and who facilitates. It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.
This brief draws on three cases to show how the private sector contributes to the conceptualisation, design, delivery and evaluation of climate-smart agricultural interventions and can help bring them to scale. Engaging the private sector in CSA interventions enhances the applicability – and thus the sustainability of interventions, increases uptake and delivers a triple win for donors, beneficiaries and the private sector.
This brief proposes to donors, government and research partners that engaging women through innovation platforms (IPs) in the inclusive processes of technology and market development can accelerate transitions towards greater sustainability, food security, nutrition, education and health
The World Bank, in collaboration with the e-Agriculture community and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), hold a series of two week online forums. These e-forums stem from the launch of the World Bank's ICT in Agriculture e-Sourcebook (2011) and the growing demand for knowledge on how to use ICT to improve agricultural productivity and raise smallholder incomes.The Summary presents the discussion during the e-forum held on 4th September 2012.
This policy brief consolidates lessons learned from an in-depth literature review on small-scale farmer (SSF) innovation systems and a two-day expert consultation on the same topic, hosted in Geneva by Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in May 2015. This review draws together published literature on the evolution of the concept, how on-farm innovation systems function in practice, and the roles of outside actors in supporting them.
This one-page brief summarizes the messages which have been highlighted during a two-day forum held in Nairobi in 2015 and organised by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the German government.
PAEPARD supports/facilitates three aflatoxin-related research consortia: (a) Stemming aflatoxin pre- and post-harvest waste in the groundnut value chain in Malawi and Zambia; (b) Developing strategies to reduce fungal toxins contamination for improved food sufficiency, nutrition and incomes along the maize value chain in the arid and semi-arid lands of Eastern Kenya; and (c) Developing feed management protocols for dairy farmers in high rainfall areas in Kenya.
This brief puts the focus on the postharvest (PH) losses in Mozambique. According to the authors the glaring lack of data loss for major food commodities in Mozambique should move the government, development agencies, donors and research institutions to invest more on rigorous and systematic field-based studies to assess losses, and to identify matching loss mitigation innovations. The authors also assert that building local capacity and strengthening policy on PH will be of essence.