Africa Lead II—the Feed the Future: Building Capacity for African Agricultural Transformation Program—aims to support and advance agricultural transformation in Africa as proposed by the African Union Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program. It will also contribute to the Feed the Future goals of reduced hunger and poverty by building the capacity of Champions—defined as men and women leaders in agriculture—to develop, lead, and manage the policies, structures and processes needed for the transformation process.
Africa Lead II is a program dedicated to supporting and advancing agricultural transformation in Africa as proposed by the African Union Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program. It will also contribute to the Feed the Future goals of reduced hunger and poverty by building the capacity of Champions—defined as men and women leaders in agriculture—to develop, lead, and manage the policies, structures and processes needed for the transformation process.
This paper asks: What have been the impacts of farmer- or community-led (informal) processes of research and development in agriculture and natural resource management in terms of food security, ecological sustainability, economic empowerment, gender relations, local capacity to innovate and influence on formal agricultural research and development institutions?
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion in the scientific literature on the advantages and disadvantages of privatization of extension and advisory services and the shift from thinking in terms of the traditional Agricultural Knowledge System towards a broader Agricultural Innovation System.
This report explores the role of rural networks in enhancing innovation processes, questioning the features of the agricultural/rural networks could enhance farmers’ ability to co-innovate in cooperation with other actors. The prospect of this investigation is also to provide interesting and significant experiences that constitute examples for the ‘European Innovation Partnership’ by increasing farmers’ capacities to create, test, implement and evaluate innovations in cooperation with other rural actors.
The report synthesises the research conducted under the PRO AKIS project for the topic "Designing, implementing and maintaining agricultural/rural networks to enhance farmers’ ability to innovate in cooperation with other rural actors".
Organic farming is recognized as one source for innovation helping agriculture to develop sustainably. However, the understanding of innovation in agriculture is characterized by technical optimism, relying mainly on new inputs and technologies originating from research. The paper uses the alternative framework of innovation systems describing innovation as the outcome of stakeholder interaction and examples from the SOLID (Sustainable Organic Low-Input Dairying) project to discuss the role of farmers, researchers and knowledge exchange for innovation.
According to the literature on regime transition, niches are sources of innovation that may lead to the transformation of the dominant regime, if processes at other level of the system – the landscape and the mainstream regime - are supportive. A focus on actors involved in the transition process and the analysis of their specific role in knowledge networks can help assessing the robustness of a specific niche and its growth potential. Knowledge systems, and in particular the dynamics of local and expert knowledge, have in fact a key role in innovation models.
According to the literature on regime tran-sition, niches are sources of innovation that may lead to the transformation of the dominant regime, if pro-cesses at other level of the system –the landscape and the mainstream regime -are supportive. A focus on actors involved in the transition process and the analysis of their specific role in knowledge networks can help assessing the robustness of a specific niche and its growth potential. Knowledge systems, and in particular the dynamics of local and expert knowledge, have in fact a key role in innovation mod-els.
This chapter explores the interrelationships between economic change and environmental issues, by showing how aspiration, education, and migration are variously connected to a loss of agroecological knowledges for rural young people. It reviews a series of case studies from Vietnam, India, and China on the implications for rural youth of changed aspirations and ecological and economic stress. The economic and cultural pressures of globalization mean young people increasingly aspire for a life outside of agrarian- and natural resource-based livelihoods.