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’.
Land and property rights, migration, and citizenship are complex issues that cut across all social, economic, and political spheres of West Africa. This paper provides an overarching scoping of the most pressing contemporary issues related to land, migration, and citizenship, including how they intersect in various contexts and locations in West Africa. The way issues are analytically framed captures structural challenges and sets them against the regional and global meta-trends of which policy makers and practitioners should be aware for conflict-sensitive planning.
This paper was synthesized from several scholarly literature and aimed at providing up-to-date information on climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, policies and institutional mechanisms that each agriculture subsector had put in place in dealing with climate change and its related issues in West Africa. For each subsector (crop, fishery and livestock), the current status, climate change impacts, mitigation and adaption strategies have been analyzed
Following the food price crisis in 2008, African governments implemented policies aiming at crowding in investment in rice value chain upgrading to help domestic rice compete with imports. This study assess the state of rice value chain upgrading in West Africa by reviewing evidence on rice millers’ investment in semi-industrial and industrial milling technologies, contract farming and vertical integration during the post-crisis period 2009–2019. We find that upgrading is more dynamic in countries with high rice production and import bills and limited comparative advantage in demand.
The study analyzes the current state of Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) in Africa and presents its challenges and opportunities. A review of the ATVET in selected Sub-Saharan Africa countries shows that there are far too few training opportunities for young people and that often, the training offered does not match the needs of the private sector and of local administrations. ATVET trainings focus primarily on production skills and on producers themselves with
Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), or FAW, is an insect native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops. It prefers maize, although it can feed on more than 80 additional species of crops including rice, sorghum, millet, sugarcane, vegetable crops and cotton.
TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was selected as Recipient Organization by FAO to facilitate TAP implementation in Africa. This is mainly due to its position as the umbrella organization bringing together and forming coalitions of major regional stakeholders in agricultural research and development.
Le projet CALAO – Capitalisation d’expériences d’acteurs pour le développement de techniques agroécologiques résilientes en Afrique de l’Ouest – a été mis en œuvre au cours de l’année 2017 dans le cadre du Projet d’appui à la sécurité alimentaire en Afrique de l’Ouest (PASANAO), financé par l’AFD et dont la maîtrise d’ouvrage est assurée par la CEDEAO.
Cette publication offre de nombreux exemples concrets détaillant différentes manières de réengager les jeunes dans le secteur agricole. Elle montre à quel point des programmes éducationnels sur mesure peuvent offrir aux jeunes les compétences et la perspicacité nécessaires pour se lancer en agriculture et adopter des méthodes de production respectueuses de l’environnement. Beaucoup des approches ou des initiatives décrites dans cette publication sont issues des jeunes eux-mêmes.
These Proceedings report on the second International Conference of the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) programme in Elmina (2009). The first International Conference was four years earlier in the same location, where it was discussed how to follow up on the findings of the first CoS Programme phase (entitled CoS1 running from 2001 to 2006). The Conference was intended to introduce the focus on “innovation systems”, and how to enhance these systems for smallholder farmers’ development.