How do the innovation platforms and facilitated networks currently deployed in the Global South help trigger dynamics of collaborative innovation that can be useful for the agroecological transition? What are the difficulties encountered and how can they be overcome? This chapter throws lights on these questions. The first part justifies the interest in studying the ecologisation of agriculture through the prism of collaborative innovation and of its paradoxes.
This Working Paper on Capacity Building is one of a series of 10 papers published alongside DFID's Research Strategy 2008-2013. It presents the case for DFID-funded research on Capacity Building - drawing on the responses given during a global consultation that DFID convened in 2007 about its future research.
This document aims to guide a small team tasked to assess the capacity for agricultural innovation in a multi-stakeholder context. The context might be an actual or potential “innovation platform” such as the three commodity-based platforms selected for the piloting capacity assessment methods, or it might be a project or programme that is more generally focused on strengthening of innovation within a subsector of agriculture within a country, such as livestock or horticulture.
La recherche et le développement dans le secteur agricole et agroalimentaire sont de plus en plus interpellés dans leurs capacités à répondre à la demande sociale et à contribuer au développement durable ou à la lutte contre la pauvreté.
L’agriculture est aujourd’hui interpellée par la société, qui exige bien plus qu’une simple production alimentaire : aliments de qualité, services environnementaux, insertion de populations marginalisées, revitalisation des territoires ruraux, habitabilité des milieux urbains, développement de productions énergétiques… Cette ouverture des futurs agricoles incite les acteurs ruraux à expérimenter de nouveaux systèmes de production et valorisation, faisant ainsi preuve de créativité et d’obstination pour exister face aux modèles de développement dominants.
This chapter reports on the different functions fulfilled by existing mechanisms for supporting collective innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sectors in the countries of the Global South in order to identify the potential contributions the research community can make to strengthen them. The authors show that a variety of mechanisms are needed to create enabling conditions for innovation and to provide a step-by-step support to innovation communities, according to their capacities and learning needs.
The Guidance Note on Operationalization provides a brief recap of the conceptual underpinnings and principles of the TAP Common Framework as well as a more detailed guide to operationalization of the proposed dual pathways approach. It offers also a strategy for monitoring and evaluation as well as a toolbox of select tools that may be useful at the different stages of the CD for AIS cycle.
The Conceptual Background provides an in-depth analysis of the conceptual underpinnings and principles of the TAP Common Framework. It is also available in French and Spanish.
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets.
This publication provides a collection of papers, commentaries, expert opinions and reflections on state-of-the-art innovation systems thinking and approaches in agriculture. It is the direct output of a CTA and WUR/CoS-SIS collaboration which had its genesis in an expert consultation on ‘Innovation Systems: Towards Effective Strategies in support of Smallholder Farmers’.