Innovation system approach offers an holistic, multidisciplinary and comprehensive framework for analyzing innovation process, the roles of science and technology actors and their interactions, emphazing on wider stakeholder participation, linkages and institutional context of innovation and processes. This paper was aimed to: 1. review the concept of innovation system; 2. appraise the application to agriculture and its relevance and 3. analyze the policy implications for agricultural extension delivery in Nigeria.
En los últimos 25 años se han producido cambios significativos en la vida rural de América Latina, en sus dimensiones política, económica, social, laboral, demográfica, cultural y ambiental, a partir de lo que se denominó los Programas de Ajuste Estructural y de las decisiones políticas y económicas que tomó cada país en particular. Uno de los elementos centrales y determinantes de las reformas en los Sistemas de Extensión y Transferencia de Tecnología Agraria (SETTA) ocurrió a partir de fines de la década de los setentas y principios de la década de los ochentas.
Las problemáticas de las empresas familiares trascienden fronteras, escalas, entornos y rubros. Dentro del sector agropecuario, las empresas familiares representan en 80 por ciento de las unidades productivas que hacen al desarrollo económico de Argentina y Uruguay. Esta iniciativa forma una comunidad virtual donde el público objetivo son los propietarios, socios, fundadores, asesores, gerentes, potenciales sucesores y toda persona interesada en los temas relativos a la empresa familiar, sin distinción de género o edad, del sector agropecuario de estos países.
The problems of family businesses transcend borders, scales, environments, and areas. Within the agricultural sector, family businesses represent 80 percent of the productive units that contribute to the economic development of Argentina and Uruguay. This initiative forms a virtual community where the target audience is the owners, partners, founders, advisors, managers, potential successors, and anyone interested in issues related to the family businesses, without distinction of gender or age, in the agricultural sector of these countries.
Agricultural policy formulation in Sub Saharan Africa has been dominated by research initiatives that alienated other farmers and stakeholders. The Sub Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA CP) seeks to use multi-stakeholder partnerships as an institutional innovation for agricultural policy formulation and development. This paper uses some experiences from the SSA CP to discuss the design principles for an effective partnership that can deliver relevant agricultural policies.
To enhance integrated rainwater management in crop-livestock systems in the Volta basin of Burkina Faso, innovation platforms (IP) comprising of multiple stakeholders were established in the districts of Koubri and Ouahigouya. Quarterly IP meetings were organized to collectively identify and prioritize constraints and opportunities, and to design and implement strategies to address them. IP represents an example of putting the agricultural innovations systems’ perspective into practice.
This paper briefly analyse the genesis, development and change in public sector-led extension approaches in India showing its temporal pattern, emerging innovations in extension approaches and the way forward. It discusses decentralized, community based, pluralistic extension approaches and their opportunities as well as limitations in changing agricultural and natural resources scenario.
Zimbabwe has a pluralistic agricultural extension system. In addition to the public extension service, donors contract private service providers to deliver extension services in specific project areas. This study assesses the impact of an outsourced extension service on rural households in the Mutasa district of Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, and examines the financial cost and benefit of this service. The extension service was delivered by a local agribusiness firm and funded by USAID. The study analyses survey data gathered from 94 client and 90 non-client rural households.
In order to facilitate Participatory Technology Development (PTD) in African agriculture, extensionists and scientists must collaborate with local innovators to optimise (where necessary) and disseminate their innovations. This literature review proposes a conceptual model for PTD in which technology is developed in the context of an adoption cycle. Building on an innovation-decision approach, the characteristics of innovations that achieve widespread uptake are identified.
The aim of this study was to explore the interactions that exist among agricultural stakeholders in the southwestern highlands of Uganda as a way of identifying opportunities and gaps for operation of Innovation Platforms (IPs) under the proof of concept of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) research project.