This guide is organized into six chapters with a summary of key steps at the end of each chapter which can be considered as main highlights. Chapter one gives an introduction and an overview of the sequence of the main agricultural research and extension approaches and their shortcomings and hence the reason for the new innovation systems approaches. Chapter two deals with an overview of the InP process covering underlying values and principles, design and processes.
This book is about the challenges and practical realities of building the capacity to innovate. It describes the experiences of the Research Into Use (RIU) programme, a five-year, multi-country investment by DFID that aimed to extract development impact from past investments in agricultural research. Specifically, it explores different approaches through which innovation capacities were built.
This report elaborates on how to use the agricultural knowledge and innovation systems framework to promote innovation at different levels with special focus on European issues related to the implementation of Horizon 2020. It is of value as a conceptual and methodological reference regarding the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS).
The State of Food and Agriculture 2014: Innovation in family farming analyses family farms and the role of innovation in ensuring global food security, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. It argues that family farms must be supported to innovate in ways that promote sustainable intensification of production and improvements in rural livelihoods. Innovation is a process through which farmers improve their production and farm management practices.
This book examines how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – through the lens of agribusiness, public policies, and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system involving many actors and interactions.
Written by practitioners, this publication is designed to make capacity development more professional and increasingly effective in achieving development goals. Practical illustrations draw on experiences from the civic, government and private sectors. A central theme is to understand capacity as more than something internal to organisations. This book shows how capacity also stems from connections between different types of actor and the levels in society at which they operate.
This volume is devided into three parts. The first part describes on-going
processes of change within, or aside, the socio-technical regime that we have
inherited from the modernisation and industrialisation process of agriculture,
which took part after the second world-war. The focus in this part is on studies
dealing with the issue of agro-ecological initiatives born in niches of organic
movement, which are questioning the mainstream regime of industrialised
agriculture.
The book documents a diversity of approaches for and results from the development of innovation processes (endorsing the definition proposed by FARA) through a review of twelve agricultural platforms in sub-Saharan Africa. These cases are far from exhaustive but nevertheless bring up a wealth of experiences. The authors do not pretend to present a model or template for the perfect innovation platform. To the contrary – they do not believe this is possible.
This research explores the role of innovation platforms and how they relate to IAR4D and the innovation system perspective, with treatment both at the theoretical and case study level (Africa). The chapters of the book take up several sticky issues and engage with them critically: policy pathways, gender equity and inclusion, and knowledge and information sharing. The introductory chapter provides context on food crops, food security and the importance of women in production, processing and trade.
This book describes how the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been trying to improve markets for staple foods in Africa through its Market Access Programme. It describes 13 projects from eight countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) that the programme has supported. The book does not attempt to describe the cases in detail. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects in order to derive lessons from which the project managers, AGRA and other development organizations can learn.