In line with the Watershed Guidelines of 2008 - released by the Government of India - the Indian Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, in partnership with the German International Cooperation (GIZ), has implemented a project called ‘Strengthening Capacity Building for Decentralized Watershed Management’. The objective of the project was to improve the capacities and networking of central and state organizations to implement large public investment for decentralized watershed management programs. The project was piloted and implemented in Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttarakhand.
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 evaluation is being commissioned within the framework contract for Evaluation of the EC’s main policies and strategies which was signed on 10 April 2007 between the EC and a consortium led by the German company Particip and composed of ADE (Aide à la Décision Économique Belgium), DIE (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik), DRNI (Italian Development Researchers’ Network), ECDPM (European Centre for Development Policy Management), and ODI (Overseas Development Institute).
This paper shares the first results of an ongoing collaborative action research in which ten development organisations explored different Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) approaches with the aim of dealing more effectively with complex processes of social change. There are four reasons why we think this paper may be of interest: 1) The paper illustrates a practical example of action research whereby the organisations themselves are becoming the researchers.
This paper uses household and key informant survey data from Ethiopia to: (1) understand the organizational structures that influence change in dairy production systems; (2) explore how local-level innovation system networks are functioning in the smallholder dairy production and (3) identify intervention points for strengthening innovation capacity. Results revealed that public sector actors are the major role players in the dairy production system despite their minor role in marketing linkages. We also found out that the private sector actors play peripheral roles in the network.
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.
This paper assesses why participation in markets for small ruminants is relatively low in northern Ghana by analysing the technical and institutional constraints to innovation in smallholder small ruminant production and marketing in Lawra and Nadowli Districts. It is argued in this paper that for the majority of smallholders, market production, which requires high levels of external inputs or intensification of resource use, is not a viable option.
Michael Kügler, from the Brussels Office of the EU-Platform of Chambers of Agriculture, presented the EU-Innovation Partnership (EIP),designed to support knowledge transfer, coop-eration, and collective investment, at the 3rd GFRAS Annual Meeting, "The Role of Rural Advisory Services in Agricultural Innovation Systems", 26-28 September 2012, Philippines. He referred to the need to pursue innovation in a cross-sectorial approach, interlinking existing initiatives, facilitating communication, providing value added through networking, and achieving syner-gies.
This article starts by describing the evolution of innovation in agricultural research and cooperation for development, including an historical overview of agricultural research for development from green revolution to the re-discover of traditional knowledge. Then the authors analyze participation in innovation processes and make a comparison of innovation systems and platforms targeting the agri-food sector in developing countries. A particular focus is reserved to the European regional networks and to the experience of the USAID Middle East Water and Livelihoods Initiative.
Using Nepal as a case, this paper illustrates how farmers and their supporting institutions are evolving and co-producing climate sensitive technologies on demand. Drawing upon the hypothesis of induced innovation, the authors examine the extent to which resource endowments have influenced the evolution of technological and institutional innovations in Nepal’s agricultural research and development. This study reveals that Nepal has developed a novel multilevel institutional partnership, including collaboration with farmers and other non-governmental organizations in recent years.