Technological innovations have driven economic development and improvement in living conditions throughout history. However, the majority of smallholder farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa have seldom adopted or used science‐based technological innovations. Consequently, several scholars have been persistently questioning the effectiveness of intervention models in smallholder agriculture. Following the agricultural innovation systems framework (AIS), this paper reviews a participatory framework known as the ‘Follow the Innovation’ (FTI) approach, which was developed in the research project ‘Economic and Ecological Restructuring of Land and Water Use in Khorezm’ (2001 ‐ 2012) and employed in an ongoing BiomassWeb project ‘Improving food security in Africa through increased system productivity of biomass‐based value webs’ (2013 ‐ 2018). The FTI approach claims that multi‐stakeholder interactions and the adaptation of ‘innovation packages’ or ‘plausible promises’ are crucial for innovation development. While appreciating the crucial role such packages play in agricultural development, the review at hand calls for a shift from defining agricultural innovation as a package or new technology to the consensus that it is an outcome of the collaborative or collegiate participation of multi‐stakeholders in planning and implementation processes, by generating and combining scientific and local perspectives on technical and non‐ technical changes over time and in space, and the reconfiguration or adaptation of embedded informal and formal institutions.
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve...
TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was...
Malgré les efforts déployés ces dernières années pour améliorer la situation de l’agriculture en Afrique subsaharienne, peu de changements ont été observés. Cet insuccès est dû, en partie, au fait que ces efforts ont été consentis par diverses entités de...
Despite efforts over recent years to improve the status of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, little change has been noted, due partially to the fact that efforts have come from individual entities, which had short-term funding or lacked the necessary expertise...
Le document de synthèse fournit une synthèse des concepts et des principes du cadre commun développé dans le cadre de la Plate-forme pour l'agriculture tropicale (TAP). L'objectif du Cadre Commun de la TAP est de promouvoir une meilleure cohérence et...
