This report summarizes studies conducted in a framework of TAP-AIS project implemented by FAO’s Research and Extension Unit, and funded by the European Union as a component of the European Union initiative on “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture” (DeSIRA).
This brochure presents the five-year TAP-AIS project (2019-2024) funded by the European Union under the DeSIRA Initiative and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The project has the main objective to strengthen capacities to innovate in national agricultural innovation systems (AIS) in the context of climate-relevant, productive, and sustainable transformation of agriculture and food systems in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific.
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.
The concept of an innovation system is used to understand how innovation contributes to economic growth. However, innovation systems do not evolve evenly in different parts of the world. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the emergence of innovation systems in the context of developing countries. It uses the Rwandan case, where agriculture is a dominant socio-economic sector with high innovation potential. It explores how stakeholder interactions and policies contribute to the emergence of an agriculture innovation system in Rwanda.
Technology and innovation are important in addressing complex problems in the agricultural sector in many developing communities. However, ways and mechanisms to integrate them in the agricultural sector are still a challenge due to the lack of clear pathways and trajectories. Value chains are seen as a strong policy instrument to increase profitability in the agricultural sector; there is also debate around whether value chains can be a potential option to organize technology and innovation trajectories in agriculture.
To determine whether a farmer’s accessibility predicts the delivery of extension services, this study used banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) disease-management advisory as a typical case with which to collect extension-delivery information from 690 farmers, distinguished by their respective accessibility. Cost–distance analysis was applied to define each farmer’s accessibility. The results revealed that a farmer’s accessibility does not predict extension delivery to that farmer in all forms of the examined extension parameters.
There is widespread need for gender-responsive agricultural research, yet the question of how this kind of research can be implemented and its success measured needs further interrogation. This paper presents a framework, developed on the basis of literature and validated by experts, for tracking the gender responsiveness of agricultural research throughout the research cycle, from the research plan to the dissemination of research findings. The framework was tested in Uganda and Rwanda on 14 research projects considered to be gender-responsive.
Rwanda has experienced exceptional economic growth since 2000 despite more than 60% of the predominately-agrarian population living on less than $1.25 a day. Approximately 76% of the country’s working population are engaged in agricultural production, which makes up about one-third of the national economy. Agriculture is also an important source of foreign exchange, making up about 63% of the value of Rwanda’s exports.
The Newsletter of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) provides regular updates on global activities by TAP and its partners, on the CDAIS projects and on upcoming related events. This issue specifically refers to the period from October 2020 to January 2021, including also some activities of February 2021.
The publication is a part of the FAO work to assist the member countries in reforming their national Extension and Advisory Services (EAS). It highlights the main elements and provide concrete guidelines for the policy makers to coordinate pluralism in extension and advisory services (EAS), i.e. ensuring that multiple EAS providers from public, private sector and NGOs/donors, provide quality services that contribute to national agricultural priorities and wellbeing of rural producers, collaborate and exchange information to maximise synergies and minimise gaps and duplications.