The citizens of Lesotho rely on a complex web of livelihood strategies made primarily of family kinships and strong community networks. Recently, community breakdowns have occurred because of extensive land degradation, soil erosion, widespread poverty, and HIV/AIDs. This thesis focuses on two aspects which are likely to help decrease the problems earlier stated.
This report presents the main results of the EU-funded IN-SIGHT project ‘Strengthening Innovation Processes for Growth and Development’. The authors sketched out a conceptual framework and knowledge base for a more effective European policy on innovation in agriculture and rural areas. Both conceptual framework and knowledge base are consistent with the new European agenda for agricultural and rural policy and sensitive to the diversity of the European agricultural and rural systems.
This presentation was realized for the GFAR workshop on "Adoption of ICT Enabled Information Systems for Agricultural Development and Rural Viability" (at IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress, 2008). It presents lessons learned through linking research to extension, including examples from projects in Nigeria, Colombia, Uganda ,Costa Rica, Egypt and Bhutan.
This report summarizes the findings of the study on Competitive Commercial Agriculture for Africa (CCAA). The objective of the CCAA study was to explore the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture.
The presentation was given in January 2009 and introduced why a new approach for livestock development for poverty alleviation was desirable, innovation, innovation systems and value chains, building of innovation platforms, learning-oriented monitoring and evaluation, and scaling up and out.
This paper shared lessons learnt from the project of Improving Productivity and Market Success in forage development approaches, scaling up strategies, opportunities and challenges in the process of farmer innovations and innovative interventions in the value-chain of market oriented livestock development in relation to sustainable use of natural resources in two districts in Ethiopia.
Graduate programs in agriculture and allied disciplines in Ethiopia are expected to make concrete contribution to market-oriented development of smallholder agriculture. This, among others, calls for realignment and engagement of the programs with smallholder farmers and, value chain, R&D and policy actors. No panacea exists, however, as to how to ensure effective linkages, and thereby responsiveness. Lessons from initiatives on the ground in the country and beyond is thus crucial to inform the development of appropriate policy and innovative strategy.
The USAID Building Agribusiness Capacity in East Timor (BACET) program was extended for three additional years in September 2008. Land O’Lakes gathered feedback from the Ministry of Agriculture, USAID, teachers and students and immediately initiated enhancements to improve the curriculum previously developed to reinforce practical and market-oriented skills.
Les systèmes d’innovation (SI) ont inspiré de nombreuses publications, notamment dans les pays industrialisés et, plus récemment, dans le monde en développement. Toutefois, à quelques exceptions près, la littérature dédiée aux SI n’explique pas de manière appropriée comment utiliser l’approche systémique pour améliorer l’innovation ou comment initier et faciliter les SI. Par ailleurs, si l’innovation elle-même semble avoir été suffisamment étudiée, son intégration dans un système qui, à son tour, opère dans certains contextes institutionnels et politiques, n’a pas été approfondie.
L’évaluation participative repose sur le principe d’une participation active des principales parties prenantes (dont les groupes les moins organisés) à l’exercice d’évaluation. Cette démarche présente un certain nombre d’atouts qui peuvent se transformer en limites quasi rédhibitoires si certains préalables ne sont pas remplis. La finalité de cet article est de discuter des avantages et des inconvénients de la participation, ainsi que des conditions à réunir pour que l’évaluation participative puisse atteindre ses objectifs.