Innovation Africa

Enriching Farmers' Livelihoods

Pascal Sanginga, Ann Waters-Bayer, Susan Kaaria, Jemimah Njuki, Chesha Wettasinha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844076710
• eBook ISBN: 9781136562945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Agricultural research, extension and education can contribute greatly to enhancing agricultural production in a sustainable way and to reducing poverty in the developing world, but achievements have generally fallen short of expectations in Africa. In recent years, growing economic and demographic pressures - coupled with the entry of new market forces and actors - have created a need and an opportunity for more interactive approaches to development. Understanding the existing innovation processes, recognizing the potential for catalysing them and learning how to support joint innovation by different groups will be the key to success.

This book covers new conceptual and methodological developments in agricultural innovation systems, and showcases recent on-the-ground experiences in different contexts in Africa. The contributions show how innovation is the outcome of social learning through interaction of individuals and organizations in both creating and applying knowledge. It brings examples of how space and incentives have been created to promote collaboration between farmers, research, extension and the private sector to develop better technologies and institutional arrangements that can alleviate poverty. In 25 broad-ranging chapters the book reflects cutting-edge thinking and practice in support of innovation processes in agriculture and management of natural resources.

CHAPTER 1

Innovation Africa: An Introduction

Ann Waters-Bayer, Pascal C. Sanginga, Susan Kaaria, Jemimah Njuki and Chesha Wettasinha

SEEKING NEW WAYS OF ENRICHING FARMERS’ LIVELIHOODS

Agricultural research, extension and education have the potential to make a great contribution to enhancing agricultural productivity in a sustainable way and, thus, contribute to reducing poverty in the developing world. However, their achievements in this respect have generally fallen short of expectations in Africa. Innovative groups within governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both national and international – have been seeking alternatives to the linear transfer of technology model. On the one hand, growing economic and demographic pressures, coupled with the entry of new market forces and actors, have created a need for a more interactive approach to development. On the other hand, recent insights into socio-cultural realities and human behaviour have revealed the opportunities offered by recognizing the creative capacities of all actors in research and development, including (and especially) the farmers themselves. Understanding the existing innovation processes, recognizing the potential for catalysing such processes and learning how to support them will be key to the success of individuals and organizations involved in agricultural research and development.

It is increasingly recognized that innovation emerges out of the interplay of ideas from multiple sources. A growing number of projects and organizations are deliberately seeking to stimulate synergy between the various potential partners in agricultural innovation. Valuable experiences are being generated across the world on how diverse actors can be encouraged to work together, and how new ideas and products – whether from formal research or from other sources – can be transformed into innovations that benefit thousands of resource-poor farmers. Such processes prepare the path to sustainability: indeed, promoting continuing innovativeness is the only way to achieve sustainability in the face of rapidly changing conditions for agricultural production and human well-being. Enhancement of the innovativeness not just of individuals but rather of systems of interacting players is needed at all levels, from the grassroots to the globe. It is crucial to strengthen the capacities of farmers and their organizations to take the lead in collaborating with other players – whether they are local blacksmiths or international plant breeders – in order to develop new and better ways of using locally available resources. But such farmer-led processes of innovation can thrive only if changes are made at various levels within institutions, organizations and policy – and above all in building the capacity of formal researchers and development agents to play constructive roles within these agricultural innovation systems.

The international symposium Innovation Africa (IAS) held in Kampala, Uganda, brought together researchers, development practitioners and – albeit to a more limited extent – people from farmer organizations and the private sector to share their current thinking, experiences and lessons from initiatives to enhance innovation systems in agriculture and natural resource management, primarily in Africa. The meeting was, in itself, innovative in that it was a collaboration of rather unusual partners: three international agricultural research institutes – the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI); an international NGO that supports rural development (the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, or IIRR); and a multi-stakeholder global partnership programme for research and development called Prolinnova (Promoting Local Innovation in Ecologically Oriented Agriculture and Natural Resource Management), which operates under the umbrella of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR). The participants in the symposium came from research, development and academia, drawing on both theory and practice of innovation systems. This meeting of minds led to lively discussions and a better understanding of the implications of an innovation systems perspective for agricultural research and development – particularly the implications for capacity-building, organizational change and policy to promote innovation in ways that focus on helping the poor to enrich their livelihoods.

From over 100 contributed papers and posters, an international editorial group selected 23 to be included as chapters in this book. These were selected with a view to covering the main conceptual and methodological developments in agricultural innovation systems, and to showcase experiences, results and lessons from research and practice in different contexts in Africa. The contributions and discussions during the symposium revealed that concepts of innovation were fairly diverse, ranging from those who regarded innovation as the adoption of technologies introduced from research to those who regarded it as the outcome of social learning by many different actors.

In his keynote address, Röling took an autobiographical approach to following the ‘story’ of innovation – describing how the related concepts and methodologies have developed from the diffusion of innovations theory developed in the 1960s (Rogers, 1962) to the current concept of agricultural innovation systems (World Bank, 2006). This sees innovation arising out of a network of individuals and organizations that interact in both creating and applying agricultural knowledge. An innovation system also includes the institutions and policies that affect the behaviour and performance of the individuals and organizations involved. An innovation – the outcome of such a process of interaction within an innovation system – can be a new product, a new process or a new form of organization; but it can be regarded as an innovation only if it is actually used.

The chapters in this book reflect a shared understanding of innovation in this sense. They also share recognition of the need to create space and incentives for promoting collaboration between farmers, research and extension services and the private sector (input and output markets) in order to develop improved technologies and institutional arrangements that can alleviate poverty.

FIVE MAJOR THEMES

Within the broad framework of research and development in agriculture and natural resource management, the chapters of this book focus on five major themes, as set out below.

Innovation concepts and methods

Röling (see Chapter 2) sets the stage by giving a historical overview of how the concept of innovation has developed over the last half century, and what lessons can be learned from research on innovation and from the practical application of the concept in the field. The remaining chapters in Part I address the basic concepts, theories and principles of agricultural innovation, as well as methodological issues and challenges, with a view to alleviating poverty. The authors look at why research into innovation systems has flourished in the last few years and the alternative tools and methods that are being applied to translate the concepts into practice.

Strengthening social capital in innovation systems

The chapters in Part II examine partnerships and other forms of social capital in agricultural innovation systems. The authors describe approaches and challenges in building and managing multi-stakeholder partnerships for innovation; ways of integrating different disciplines and forms of knowledge; the role of farmer organizations and other local groupings of actors in these systems; and the synergies between local ‘grassroots’ and wider national or international innovation systems. They highlight the challenge of moving beyond ‘participation’ in the now conventional sense of the term – which refers to drawing farmers or other local resource users into research and development activities conceived by outsiders – to partnerships that recognize the contributions of the different actors and allow them an equal say in the collaboration.

Policy, institutional and market-led innovation

Part III deals with institutional change, policy-making and knowledge-sharing to support agricultural innovation systems. The authors of these chapters explore experiences in alternative ways and institutions to fund agricultural innovation processes, and ways of enhancing networking for mutual learning, as well as to influence thinking and policies about how agricultural research, extension and education should be done. They show how participatory approaches to analysing innovation systems can stimulate institutional learning and organizational change. Chapter 11, in particular, looks at the role of markets in catalysing innovation processes, and draws lessons from experiences in enhancing entrepreneurship and linking smallholder farmers to markets.

Enhancing local innovation processes

The chapters in Part IV reveal how local people initiate and manage innovation processes in agriculture and natural resource management. These local initiatives in informal experimentation to develop ‘new things and ways that work’ (Scheuermeier et al, 2004) are all too often overlooked or underestimated as engines of change in promoting broad-based agriculture-led economic growth and development. The authors examine what these local initiatives and strategies imply for the types of support that governments, civil society, the private sector and international agencies need to provide. They explore the link between farmer-led innovation and poverty alleviation, and draw lessons from experiences in enhancing community learning and change processes and in scaling up farmer-led participatory innovation processes.

Building innovation capacity

The chapters in Part V analyse different approaches to strengthening the innovation capacities of farmers and their organizations, other entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, universities, and government and private-sector organizations involved in agricultural research and development. They also address strategies and experiences in integrating innovation systems perspectives and approaches within institutions of higher learning and education at all levels.

The various chapters draw on diverse fields and disciplines of the social, agricultural and natural resource sciences, and present many examples of good practice in studying and enhancing the process of innovation for effective agricultural research, development and education. The concluding chapter, Chapter 25, highlights the main lessons learned from the symposium – above all, from the contributions presented in this book. It draws attention to gaps in knowledge and examines the prospects for research and practice of agricultural innovation systems in agriculture and natural resource management in Africa.

REFERENCES

Rogers, E. M. (1962) Diffusion of Innovations, Free Press, New York, NY

Scheuermeier, U., Katz, E. and Heiland, S. (2004) Finding New Things and Ways That Work: A Manual for Introducing Participatory Innovation Development (PID), Swiss Centre for Agricultural Extension, Lindau, Switzerland

World Bank (2006) Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Agricultural Research, World Bank, Washington, DC

I

Innovation Concepts and Methods

CHAPTER 2

Conceptual and Methodological Developments in Innovation

Niels Röling

FOCUS ON INNOVATION

The Innovation Africa Symposium (IAS) focuses the spotlight on a subject that deserves all the attention it can get. Of course, innovation is a sexy concept that appeals to left and right, and young and old, including Mzees like myself. Innovation has promise. It sounds like a way forward. It is easy to get people behind it. But beware! The concept is used in different meanings. It can represent very different perspectives. It can lead to considerable confusion. It is a real ‘battlefield of knowledge’, as Norman Long once called it (Long and Long, 1992). Sometimes it is in need of innovation itself!

This conceptual overview is meant to put the subject on the map. I believe I am the right person to give it. Few people have fallen into more traps and were seduced by more meanings for innovation, innovation systems, system innovations and what not than I. So it seems a good idea to give this overview of conceptual and methodological developments as an intellectual autobiography. I use my own ‘history of innovation’ to take you through the minefield of meanings and perspectives. For each episode, I zoom in on implications for innovation in Africa.

1970: DOCTORAL STUDIES WITH EVERETT ROGERS

Diffusion of innovations

I obtained my PhD in the US during 1970 with Everett Rogers as my main supervisor. I was with his US Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project The Diffusion of Innovations in Rural Societies, which operated in Brazil, India and Nigeria. I worked in Nigeria, where I spent four years, and later joined Rogers in Michigan, in the American Mid-West, where he developed one of the most influential theories of innovation.

Everett Rogers is called the father of the Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 2003). The paradigm which Rogers so successfully synthesized and promoted since his first overview in 1961 goes back to a study of the diffusion of hybrid maize in Iowa during the early 1940s (Ryan and Gross, 1943). Specific conditions in the Corn Belt led to the ‘discovery’ of diffusion as an autonomous process that multiplies the impact of research and extension. But before we all get excited about diffusion as the way to lift up African agriculture, we must be aware of the specific conditions that allow spontaneous diffusion of a novel idea or technology in a community of farmers:

• A large number of farms or firms all produce the same commodity for the same market.

• Each of them is too small to affect the price of the commodity. Hence, they all produce against the going price (price takers) and seek to improve their situation by producing more of the commodity, if possible against lower costs.

• Given the inelasticity of demand for most farm products, all these farmers trying to produce more, and more efficiently, exerts a constant downward pressure on product prices.

• All of the farms have access to credit, fertilizers, extension, farm journals and agri-business, and are members of farmer organizations to different degrees.

Introducing a new idea or ‘innovation’ (note how I use the term here – i.e. as a noun usually denoting a technology), such as hybrid maize, in such conditions (typically called a ‘recommendation domain’) can lead to a wave of ‘innovation’ (here used in the sense of a process) as individual farmers adopt. The wave of innovation is called the ‘diffusion curve’, which is usually depicted as an S: the diffusion process starts slowly, then gathers momentum and finally peters out when all farmers for whom it is relevant or feasible have adopted the innovation.

The ‘discovery’ of the diffusion of innovations led to a great deal of research. At one time, it was the most popular social science research subject and more than 2000 studies on diffusion had been completed by the time I last checked (quite long ago). One can imagine the excitement. Here was a spontaneous social process that multiplied the efforts of research and extension for free. Diffusion seemed key to social change and modernization. It explained the spread not only of agricultural technologies, but also of the hula hoop and contraceptives.

The agricultural treadmill

Little wonder that, when I did my PhD in Michigan, innovation could be talked of only in terms of diffusion. Apart from social scientists such as Rogers, economists also examined the phenomenon, the best known probably being Cochrane (1958) from Minnesota, who coined the phrase ‘the agricultural treadmill’. To the existing theory, he added some important components related to farmers’ incentives.

When a new technology begins to be adopted, it allows those using it to produce more, or more efficiently, against the going price, which is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1 Innovation Africa: An Introduction
• Part I — Innovation Concepts and Methods
• Part II — Strengthening Social Capital in Agricultural Innovation Systems
• Part III — Policy, Institutional and Market-Led Innovation
• Part IV — Local Innovation Processes
• Part V — Building Capacity for Joint Innovation
• List of Contributors
• Index