innovation systems and institutional change
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Convergence of Sciences
Convergence of Sciences
Niels Röling and Dominique Hounkonnou
(CoS-SIS Program Management Committee)INNOVATION IN EXTENSION AND ADVISORY
SERVICES, 15-18 NOV. 2011, NAIROBI
2
INNOVATION SYSTEM APPROACH TO ENHANCING SMALLHOLDER
AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA
Convergence of Sciences
AGRIC. EXTENSION: SICK BUT NOT DEAD• Not much left after T&V… but lots of initiatives
and experiments• Early 90s: CTA & partners try to capture these:– Donor workshop in Wageningen (first contours of
Neuchâtel initiative, 1994)– Conference in Cameroun
• IAASTD 2009 signed by 58 nations: smallholders key to global food security
• Institutions matter: Innovation System (IS) Approach to development of smallholder agriculture
Convergence of Sciences
The SSA-Challenge Programme• Major FARA experiment with an IS approach: 36
Innovation Platforms (IP) in a controlled experimental design ($ 26 million)
• Statistical analysis (Pamuk, Bulte & Adekunle, in prep.): IPs ‘work’, and better than conventional extension and controls: more poverty alleviation, more and more diverse innovative activity
• Statistical analysis (Van Rijn & Bulte, in prep.): mechanism by which IPs work is linkage with external actors; becoming part of network of such actors
• Similar findings from CoS 5 years after: technologies that involve factors over which farmers have no control do not persist (Sterk et al., in prep.)
Convergence of Sciences
CoS-SIS: Convergence of Sciences: Strengthening Innovation Systems
• 9 Innovation Platforms, € 4.5 million• Focus on understanding mechanisms• 30 years of promoting science-based technologies to
increase yields per ha have left us with few successes (e.g., Gabre-Mahdin & Haggblade 2004)
• Institutions explain a major proportion of the variance in the quality and quantity of smallholder production (cocoa Ghana, cotton Benin, rice Mali)
• Not absence of institutions: complex institutional context often ‘unhelpful’ for smallholders
Convergence of Sciences
Performance Indicators
• Ability to ‘think institutions’, in addition to cost-benefit; technological transfer; participation; etc.
• Not dismiss institutions as ‘politics’ about which one can do little
• Ability to scope and diagnose: translate smallholder constraints into attributes of institutional context
• Analyse actor networks to identify key actors and champions who can take concerted action.
• With those actors: design institutional experiments and measure impact
Convergence of Sciences
Experience industrial agricultures• Institutional development preceded
technology-enhanced growth in productivity;• Agricultural leaders developed vision of an
enabling context for family farming: synergy of farmer education, extension, research, credit, crop insurance, subsidies, land tenure, equitable market access, etc.
• Not a uniform package but adaptive, context- and domain-specific
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Some Concrete Measures (1)• Develop capacity of commodity research
institutes (e.g., CRIG) to carry out institutional research and experimentation
• Make available competitive research grants for institutional research
• Develop and implement curricula for academic training of agricultural scientists in institutional ‘thinking’ and research
Convergence of Sciences
Some Concrete Measures (2)• Initiate a task force in the Ministry of
Agriculture to prioritise (domain-specific?) institutional bottlenecks to smallholder development
• Make available budget for interaction: key stakeholders need to meet, innovation emerges from interaction
• Transform extension into innovation Process facilitation
Convergence of Sciences
Unhelpful institutions metaphor