Paper presented to the European Initiative for Agricultural Research and Development (EIARD), 12 January 2015.
This article proposes ways to use programme theory for evaluating aspects of programmes that are complicated or complex. It argues that there are useful distinctions to be drawn between aspects that are complicated and those that are complex, and provides examples of programme theory evaluations that have usefully represented and address both of these.
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 contains a collection of papers that discuss the experience of an Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) capacity building program in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The program was the AusAID-funded Agricultural Research and Development Support Facility (ARDSF), which ran for fi ve years from 2007 to 2012, and which sought to improve the delivery of services by agricultural research organisations to smallholder farmers.
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 report reviews recent trends in agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and discusses the impact of a wide range of policies on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sector. It suggests a framework for analysing the role of governments in fostering increased innovation, with a view to helping to identify practical actions that governments could take to improve productivity growth, sustainable use of resources, and resilience to future market developments in national and global agriculture and agri-food systems.
This brief report lays out ten theories of advocacy and policy change. These theories are intended to articulate the policy making process and identify causal connections supported by research to explain how and why a change may or may not occur. It further provides examples of the way in which advocates, funders, and evaluators can use these theories in their work.
The paper discusses the work force development (Wfd) tool that places explicit focus on three functional dimensions of Wfd policies and institutions: (a) strategy; (b) system oversight; and (c) service delivery. Strategy refers to the alignment between workforce development and a country’s national goals for economic and social development. System oversight refers to the governance arrangements that shape the behaviors key stakeholders involved, including individuals, employers, and training providers.
An 'Outcome Mapping' approach was applied retrospectively to five diverse, highly collaborative research projects aimed at poverty reduction. Designed to help plan for, clarify, and document intended and actual changes in behaviour, actions, and relationships of groups and organisations that directly influence a project's intended beneficiaries, Outcome Mapping enabled the authors to identify and describe the strategies and actions that played important roles in the innovations achieved.
This facilitation guide was developed to support the training of scientists who are members of the CCAFS Working Group on impact pathways and M&E for results-based management. The group attended a highly participatory introductory training from 1-5th April 2014 in Segovia, Spain. The objectives of the workshop were: 1. To introduce working group members to outcome thinking; 2. To present elements of the CCAFS theory of change (TOC), impact pathway (IP) and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework; 3.