Governments in sub-Saharan Africa and their donors have made business investment a major policy goal, supported by a variety of incentives designed to support business investment in agriculture. However, little is known about the factors which influence agribusiness investment in Africa, and how effective these incentives have been. This paper examines the motivations of agribusiness investment, the effectiveness of government and donor policy incentives, and the relevance of these incentives for four different commercialisation pathways.
El modelo de Agencias de Gestión de la Innovación para el Desarrollo de Proveedores (AGI-DP) se diseñó e implementó con extensionistas rurales desde el año 2009 y hasta el 2014. Permite llevar a la práctica la selección, capacitación, desarrollo, seguimiento y evaluación de equipos técnicos especializados en extensionismo en red.
This paper addresses four questions: · What lessons can be drawn from the "rise and decline" of NARS in Africa? · What can African research managers learn from some of the successful reforms of NARS in Asia and Latin America over the past 10 to 15 years? · What are the major challenges facing the NARS in the ASARECA region in the coming 10-20 years? · What are the critical reforms and the incentives needed to develop pluralistic, accountable, productive and financially self-sustaining NARS in AFRICA?
This paper reviews the extension curricula currently followed in universities in India at different levels in light of the new challenges faced by farmers, the new capacities needed among extension personnel to address these challenges, new trends in the job market and advances made in the field of extension.
The process of knowledge brokering in the agricultural sector, where it is generally called agricultural extension, has been studied since the 1950s. While agricultural extension initially employed research push models, it gradually moved towards research pull and collaborative research models. The current agricultural innovation systems perspective goes beyond seeing research as the main input to change and innovation, and recognises that innovation emerges from the complex interactions among multiple actors and is about fostering combined technical, social and institutional change.
These advanced training materials have been produced to foster the capacity of practitioners from private, nongovernmental and public sectors on one hand, and academics and scientists on the other, to practically implement cost-efficient RWHI technologies and practices in arid and semi-arid areas. Therefore, these training materials intend to provide the required information to support proper planning, design and construction of cost-efficient RWHI technologies and practices, with special emphasis on the specific problems encountered in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The adoption of innovations and Precision Agriculture Technologies (PAT) is fundamental for establishing the patterns of agricultural production. However, the dynamics of adoption of PAT by farmers differs by regions. Although there is large number of related researches, there are considerable gaps in the literature: studies on adoption of PAT can be systematically reviewed and integrated in a conceptual model of technology adoption by rural producers, which still lacking in the literature.
Sustainable agricultural intensification requires the use of multiple agricultural technologies in an integrated manner to enhance productivity while conserving the natural resource base. This study analyses the adoption and impacts of sustainable intensification practices (SIPs) using a dataset from Ghana. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was estimated to assess the adoption of multiple SIPs. Moreover, we used a multivalued semi-parametric treatment effect (MVTE) model to estimate the effects of adopting multiple SIPs on maize productivity.
In this paper, the authors review the conditions that have been undermining sustainable food and nutrition security in the Caribbean, focusing on issues of history, economy, and innovation. Building on this discussion, we then argue for a different approach to agricultural development in the Small Island Developing States of the CARICOM that draws primarily on socioecological resilience and agricultural innovation systems frameworks.
The success of multi-stakeholder ARD (Agricultural Research for Development) partnerships is often attributed to stakeholder interaction and knowledge exchange, collective learning and establishment of mutual trust between the partners involved. Achieving these outcomes depends very much on the leadership of the partnership, and how this leadership relates to partnership facilitation and also project coordination and/or management. This brief explores the different skills and attitudes required by leaders of ARD partnerships, and how these relate to different contexts.