This paper presents and discusses a diagnostic framework to identify institutional processes in the creation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for agricultural innovation. The diagnostic framework proposed here combines a conceptualisation of institutions with a conceptualisation of technology. We argue that a performative notion of institutions provides a better tool for institutional diagnostics than the common understanding of institutions as ‘rules of the game’.
The project case-studies described in this document a range of local-level, mainly donor-funded projects in four countries (Sierra Leone, Benin, Uganda and Mozambique). These projects incorporate climate change in their design and rationale in different ways, but generally base themselves on broad-brush climate trends or climate uncertainty rather than on specific downscaled projections. They also demonstrate a continuum ranging from pure knowledge provision, through breeding, seed supply, input provision and marketing, to provision of hardware and infrastructure, especially in irrigation.
The present study was designed with the following objectives: i) to evaluate selected stress-tolerant maize hybrids developed by CIMMYT in eastern Africa under farmers’ conditions; ii) to identify farmers’ selection criteria in evaluating and selecting maize hybrids; iii) to let farmers evaluate the varieties and score them for the identified criteria and overall.
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental activities of government programmes, NGOs and development projects.
Multi-stakeholder platforms have become mainstream in projects, programmes and policy interventions aiming to improve innovation and livelihoods systems, i.e. research for development interventions in low-and middle-income contexts. However, the evidence for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions and their added value is not compelling. This paper focuses on stakeholder participation as one of the channels for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions, i.e.
Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context.
Increasingly, (inter)national development organisations are investing in programmes for youth in agribusiness throughout Africa.
Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.
There are divergent views on what capacity development might mean in relation to agricultural biotechnology. The core of this debate is whether this should involve the development of human capital and research infrastructure, or whether it should encompass a wider range of activities which also include developing the capacity to use knowledge productively. This paper uses the innovation systems concept to shed light on this discussion, arguing that it is innovation capacity rather than science and technology capacity that has to be developed.
There is widespread need for gender-responsive agricultural research, yet the question of how this kind of research can be implemented and its success measured needs further interrogation. This paper presents a framework, developed on the basis of literature and validated by experts, for tracking the gender responsiveness of agricultural research throughout the research cycle, from the research plan to the dissemination of research findings. The framework was tested in Uganda and Rwanda on 14 research projects considered to be gender-responsive.