One way to create an innovation system (AIS) is through the formation and utilization of certain innovation configurations known as Multistakeholder Platforms (MSPs) and/or Innovation Platforms (IPs). CGIAR’s Challenge Programs on Water and Food (CPWF) use both MSPs and IPs to bring together a diverse set of relevant stakeholders to address common challenges in river basins globally, and in the Volta River Basin system in West Africa in particular.
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.
This synthesis report presents the outputs of the workshop organised by CTA at its headquarters in Wageningen, The Netherlands, 15-17 July 2008. The outputs are presented in two main parts, each corresponding to one of the workshop objectives, and ends with a section on the way forward as suggested by the workshop participants. It also includes a first attempt to come to a consolidated generic framework on AIS performance indicators, based on the outputs of the different working groups.
Based on international literature, preliminary experiences in a three-country West African research programme, and on the disappointing impact of agricultural research on African farm innovation, the current paper argues that institutional change demands rethinking the pathways to innovation so as to acknowledge the role of rules, distribution of power and wealth, interaction and positions. The time is opportune: climate change, food insecurity, high food prices and concomitant riots are turning national food production into a political issue also for African leaders.
This paper examines different practical methods for stakeholders to analyse power dynamics in multi-stakeholders processes (MSPs), taking into account the ambiguous and uncertain nature of complex adaptive systems. It reflects on an action learning programme which focused on 12 cases in Africa and Asia put forward by 6 Dutch development non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
This note is part of the Global Good Practices Initiative, which aims to provide information about extension approaches and methods in easy-to-understand formats. It focuses on Innovation Platforms, examining in particular two case studies: the Ghana Oil Palm platform and the Research Into Use (RIU) programme in Tanzania.
Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed. The article revisits this issue from a number of angles: current approaches to enlisting SSA smallholders in agricultural development; the history of the phenomenal productivity growth in the USA, The Netherlands and Green Revolution Asia; and the current framework conditions for SSA productivity growth.
The study report is based on case studies from Bangladesh (Sulaiman, 2010), Bolivia (Pafumi and Ulloa, 2010), DR Congo (Mbaye, 2010) and Ghana (Adjei-Nsiah and Dormon, 2010) which were carried out with the purpose of assessing needs and gaps with regard to the provision of innovation support services for climate change adaptation. It took the form of desk-studies complemented with key informant interviews.
This paper assesses why participation in markets for small ruminants is relatively low in northern Ghana by analysing the technical and institutional constraints to innovation in smallholder small ruminant production and marketing in Lawra and Nadowli Districts. It is argued in this paper that for the majority of smallholders, market production, which requires high levels of external inputs or intensification of resource use, is not a viable option.
The purpose of this article is to investigate effective reformism: strategies that innovation networks deploy to create changes in their environment in order to establish a more conducive context for the realization and durable embedding of their innovation projects. Using a case study approach, effective reformism efforts are analyzed in a technological innovation trajectory related to the implementation of a new poultry husbandry system and an organizational innovation trajectory concerning new ways of co-operation among individual farms to establish economies of scale.