This paper illustrates the Small Stock Innovation Platform, an initiative which is one of the key tangible outcomes of the Strengthening Capacity in Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA) program, focused on strengthening capacity in agricultural research systems in selected countries and institutions in all three sub-regions of Sub Saharan Africa.
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
La seguridad de la tenencia es un requisito previo importante para la gestión forestal sostenible. La diversificación de los sistemas de tenencia podría proporcionar una base para mejorar la gestión de los boques y los medios de vida locales, especialmente cuando la capacidad de gestión forestal del Estado no es suficiente.
This Training of Trainers Manual is designed to help build the capacity of trainers in flash flood risk management, who can then disseminate the knowledge to a larger number of practitioners. The manual presents an eight-day course including a three-day field trip. Detailed lesson plans for 21 sessions are followed by resource materials that will enable the trainers to replicate the course in their own work areas.
This review aims to introduce the institutional and policy oriented literature on technological innovation into the context of post harvest engineering. The focus is how rigorous quality and food safety standards in cross-border agricultural and horticultural trade influence technological change up stream in the agri-food chain. The review presents a selection of literature that considers technological innovation as a process, with a specific focus on the enabling and constraining institutional conditions found in developing countries.
This paper explores the application of the innovation systems framework to the design and construction of national agricultural innovation indicators. Optimally, these indicators could be used to gauge and benchmark national performance in developing more responsive, dynamic, and innovative agricultural sectors in developing countries.
This paper traces the evolution of the innovation systems framework within the agricultural sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, and presents a conceptual framework for agricultural innovation systems. The difference between innovation ecology/ecosystems and intervention-based innovations systems is highlighted, given that these two concepts are used at different levels in promoting and sustaining agricultural innovations.
Given the diversity and context-specificity of innovation systems approaches, in March 2007 the World Bank organized a workshop in which about 80 experts (representing donor agencies, development and related agencies, academia, and the World Bank) took stock of recent experiences with innovation systems in agriculture and reconsidered strategies for their future development. This paper summarizes the workshop findings and uses them to develop and discuss key issues in applying the innovation systems concept. The workshop’s recommendations, including next steps for the wider
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role that benchmarking can play in rural and agricultural innovations. Although generally known as 'traditional sector', rural activities are far from static but rather driven by old and new challenges pleading for innovative responses. Despite the broad range of insights from the burgeoning literature on innovation systems during the last decade, most benchmarking thinking and practice still remains highly science-based and centred in promoting public R&D, especially in developing countries.
The book documents a diversity of approaches for and results from the development of innovation processes (endorsing the definition proposed by FARA) through a review of twelve agricultural platforms in sub-Saharan Africa. These cases are far from exhaustive but nevertheless bring up a wealth of experiences. The authors do not pretend to present a model or template for the perfect innovation platform. To the contrary – they do not believe this is possible.