Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.
This report is part of the AFRHINET project under the ACP-EU Cooperation Programme in Science and Technology (S&T II). The overall aims of the project are to enhance options for sustainable integration of rainwater harvesting for irrigation through understanding adoption constraints and developing networks for capacity building and technology transfer. The African partners are Addis Ababa University and WaterAid-Ethiopia in Ethiopia, University of Nairobi and ICRAF-Searnet in Kenya, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and University of Zimbabwe and ICRISAT-Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe.
This study has been produced with the overall goal to document and analyse exisiting best practices in the field of RWHI management in sub-Saharan Africa, with a special focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. This is meant to determine the suitability of RWHI management under multivariate biophysical and socioeconomic conditions. The best practices include specific information and know-how on the performance, cost-efficiency and impacts of RWHI technologies.
These advanced training materials have been produced to foster the capacity of practitioners from private, nongovernmental and public sectors on one hand, and academics and scientists on the other, to practically implement cost-efficient RWHI technologies and practices in arid and semi-arid areas. Therefore, these training materials intend to provide the required information to support proper planning, design and construction of cost-efficient RWHI technologies and practices, with special emphasis on the specific problems encountered in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
These training materials have been produced to foster the capacity of key members of local communities to practically implement RWHI systems in a cost-efficient manner. The specific target group of these capacity building materials are local community members who are directly involved in the replication and scale-up of RWHI technologies and practices, i.e.
These recommendations are a compilation of 2 regional studies at sub-Saharan Africa level which focused on research and technology transfer in the field of rainwater harvesting irrigatio nmanagement on one hand (section 3), and effective policy recommendations on the use of rainwater for off-season small-scale irrigation on the other (section 4). The regional studies upon which this transnational study is based come from the analysis of national studies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
This paper addresses the question how public-private partnerships (PPPs) function as systemic innovation policy instruments within agricultural innovation systems. Public-private partnerships are a popular government tool to promote innovations. However, the wide ranging nature of PPPs make it difficult to assess their effects beyond the direct impacts they generate for the partners.
Vertical linkages occur among innovation platforms organized at different levels: community, district and national. Horizontal linkages occur among platforms situated at the same level (e.g. in multiple districts) to strengthen their bargaining position or for learning. This brief discusses ways to facilitate learning and problem solving across innovation platforms at different levels (vertical linkages) and between initiatives located at the same level (horizontal linkages). It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.
The international workshop on Agricultural Innovation Systems in Africa (AISA) was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 29–31 May 2013. Its main objectives were to learn jointly about agricultural innovation processes and systems in Africa, identify policy implications and develop policy messages, and explore perspectives for collaborative action research on smallholder agricultural innovation.The workshop focused on sharing experiences in trying to understand and strengthen multi-stakeholder innovation processes and the role of smallholders in innovation, and identifying and discussing priorities an
Based on farmer and value chain actor interviews, this comparative study of five emerging dairy clusters elaborates on the upgrading of farming systems, value chains, and context shapes transformations from semi-subsistent to market-oriented dairy farming. The main results show unequal cluster upgrading along two intensification dimensions: dairy feeding system and cash cropping. Intensive dairy is competing with other high-value cash crop options that resource-endowed farmers specialize in, given conducive support service arrangements and context conditions.