LenCD has prepared a joint statement on results and capacity development (presented in this publication), which stresses that meaningful, sustainable results are premised on proper investments in capacity development and that these results materialize at different levels and at different times, along countries’ development trajectory. To provide evidence in support of this statement, LenCD launched a call for submission of stories.
This paper traces the evolution of the innovation systems framework within the agricultural sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, and presents a conceptual framework for agricultural innovation systems. The difference between innovation ecology/ecosystems and intervention-based innovations systems is highlighted, given that these two concepts are used at different levels in promoting and sustaining agricultural innovations.
Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. By creating Influence Network Maps, individuals and groups can clarify their own view of a situation, foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities.
This study assessed the capacity for designing and implementing agricultural and rural development policies, strategies, and programs in Nigeria. Data for this study were derived from initial consultations at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources (FMAWR), Federal Ministry of Women affairs and Social Development (FMWASD), and the Federal Ministry of Environment (FMEnv) early in 2008. Two consultation workshops were also held, one for relevant staff in the ministries, parastatals, and NGOs; and the other for relevant university professors and researchers.
Women often have less access to agricultural information than men, constraining their participation in decision-making on crops, technologies, and practices. In the design of agricultural extension programs, women may be viewed as insignificant actors in agricultural production. Moreover, even if their role is recognized, valuable information on production does not flow freely within the household from men to women.
Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.
This paper briefly reviews three conceptual frameworks: namely, the national agricultural research system (NARS), the agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) and the agricultural innovation system (AIS) concepts. Next, the paper reviews the definition of ‘innovation’ and proposes that agricultural innovation can occur at four different but interlinked domains.
This paper looks at brokerage functions in a project on building innovation capacity through improved networking. Innovation capacity influences how actors respond to changes in their environments. In such dynamic environments well connected sets of actors are at an advantage in that they can combine skills to address the emerging opportunities and challenges. However, policy and cultural barriers especially in African innovation systems raise the transaction costs of networking leading to weak connectivity among actors thus poor innovation capacity.
Successful cases of innovation invariably demonstrate a range of partnerships, alliances and network-like arrangements that connect together knowledge users, knowledge producers and others involved in enabling innovation in the market, policy and civil society arenas. With this comes the realisation that public agricultural research needs to strengthen links to a wider set of players from the private and civil society sectors and, of course, farmers themselves. Public agricultural extension services have traditionally played the role of linking farmers to technology.
This paper examines how the different institutional innovations arising from various permutations of linkages and interactions of ARD organizations (national, international advanced agricultural research centres and universities) influenced the different outcomes in addressing identified ARD problems.