building agricultural innovation capacity in developing countries: requirements and lessons andy...
TRANSCRIPT
Building agricultural innovation capacity in developing countries:
requirements and lessons
Andy Hall, United Nations University, MERIT
Main messages• Developing agricultural innovation capacity
needs to go beyond strengthening research.
• Priorities are building linkages and new ways of working that promote interaction between research, enterprise and developmental players
• Interventions need to have a long term perspective and give sufficient emphasis to facilitating institutional learning.
Innovation capacity, what does it mean
• Scientific and other skills and information in research, enterprises, training organisations, developmental organisation.
• The practices and routines (institutions), patterns of interaction within an economy and policies needed to create and put knowledge into productive use
• The skills and IIP needed to respond to an evolving set of challenges and opportunities.
• Learning-by-doing whereby organisations engaging in the innovation process continuously adapt ways of working and routines – institutional learning --, incrementally improving their ability to utilise knowledge and information
Agricultural innovation capacity: recent evidence
• Recent study with the World Bank: Enabling agricultural innovation: how to go beyond strengthening research systems.
• Applied the innovation systems concept to explore innovation capacity
• 8 sectors, 4 countries
Case studies
Country Sector Niche withstrong growth
Exportorientation
Traditionalsector in
transformation
Employmentpotential
Bangla-desh
Shrimp X X X
Food processing X X X
India Medicinal plants X X X X
Vanilla X X
Ghana Pineapple X X
Cassavaprocessing
X X
Colombia Cassavaprocessing
X X
Cut flowers X X X
What drives innovation?
• Two distinctive scenarios emerged
• Usually. Sectors emerge because entrepreneurs identify new market opportunities and innovate to gain market access. Subsequently falter as can’t continuously innovate in dynamic markets
• Occasionally. Research interventions promote innovation when organised in ways that promote interaction.
Innovation capacity development needs
• Investing in agricultural research alone is not enough
• Linkages and patterns of interaction needed for innovation are often missing and need to be strengthened
• Lack of interaction is a reflection of deep rooted habits and practices (i.e. institutions) in both public and private sector organisations and civil society.
• Institutional change – new ways of working -- are needed that can support stronger patterns of interaction. between research, enterprise and developmental organisations
National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), India
• NAIP is 6 year programme of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) supported by the World Bank.
• Builds on earlier NATP that provided resources for conducting research and skill up-grading in frontier areas of science.
• Novel feature of NAIP is its use of competitive funds to establish consortia of research, enterprise and developmental organisations on selected themes.
• Responds explicitly to an identified need to invest in building partnerships to improve the relevance and uptake of research in India.
Early lessons
• Design reflects Indian research system and innovation capacity context -- earlier reforms and long debate on public private partnerships
• Allowed diversity of consortium composition and leadership to match themes (not just PPP)
• Used themes on improving value chains to attract private sector. Used Theme on sustainable rural livelihoods to attract novel consortia on development
• Importance of complimentary investments in (i) skill development on partnering and (ii) on consortium formation – used a helpdesk and sensitization workshops
• Explicit efforts to derive institutional lessons and distil principles for wider diffusion and use could add further value
Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotech Programme
• Long term donor support to focus agricultural biotech on the needs of poor farmers -- 10 plus years – recognised need to socialise scientists to a new way of working.
• Explicit focus on building alliances between scientific and NGO communities using research support provided through a competitive fund
• A novel feature was the integrated bottom up approach (IBU) -- involved undertaking detailed needs assessment exercises with farmers to set overall guiding priorities for the programme
• Programme coordination outside the agricultural research system to avoid capture by research driven interests.
Lessons
• NGO’s rather than scientists undertook the needs assessment exercise to set priorities. This strengthened the developmental relevance of priorities
• Early wins with simple biotech demonstrated to reluctant scientists the value of working with NGOs in the field.
• The programme recognised that institutional change was a long term goal, but could have invested in facilitating institutional learning to speed this process and diffuse to others.
• Programme was reluctant to partner with the private sector and so an opportunity to build interaction with potentially important players was lost.
• The coordinating unit started to evolve into a consortium broker when donor money was reduced
Policy considerations • Institutional change is at the heart of innovation
capacity development and requires a long term commitment
• Competitive research funds can be used to provide incentives to build linkages – Only suitable in some cases and might be starting point for other initiatives, industry associations etc.
• Incentives for building links and interaction needs to be coupled with substantial investments in skill development to help adjust to new ways of working
Policy considerations
• Coordinating organisations from outside the research system might be useful, but not always possible.
• Facilitating institutional learning could add significant value to capacity development initiatives.
• Shift from prescriptions to principles to be interpreted locally. Requires strengthening of innovation policy capacity