Connecting science with policy has always been challenging for both scientists and policy makers. In Ghana, Mali and Senegal, multi-stakeholder national science-policy dialogue platforms on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) were setup to use scientificevidence to create awareness of climate change impacts on agriculture andadvocate for the mainstreaming of climate change and CSA into agriculturaldevelopment plans.
Private sector actors bring expertise, resources, and new perspectives to agricultural development, but the tendency to short-term approaches and market-based orientation has been unable to drive a systemic change in the development agenda. We explore how multi-stakeholder dialogues can capitalize on and trickle systemic change through private sector involvement. Analysis from the farmer-led irrigation development multi-stakeholder dialogue space (FLI-MDS) in Ghana shows the need for a physical and institutional space to cater for and merge different stakeholder interests.
Various authors have identified the potential relevance of innovation system approaches for inclusive innovation, that is, the means by which new goods and services are developed for and by the poor. However, it is still a question how best to operationalize this. Innovation platforms (IPs) represent an example of putting an inclusive innovation system approach into practice by bringing different types of stakeholders together to address issues of mutual concern and interest with a specific focus on the marginalized poor.
One option for practically applying innovation systems thinking involves the establishment of innovation platforms (IPs). Such platforms are designed to bring together a variety of different stakeholders to exchange knowledge and resources and take action to solve common problems. Yet relatively little is known about how IPs operate in practice, particularly how power dynamics influence platform processes.This paper focuses on a research-for-development project in the Ethiopian highlands which established three IPs for improved natural resource management.
This study reports on the contribution of farmer– to-farmer video-mediated group learning to capital assets building of women in resource-poor households. Data were collected using structured interviews with 140 randomly selected women in 28 video villages and 40 women in four control villages in north-west Bangladesh. Video-mediated group learning enhanced women’s ability to apply and experiment with seed technologies. It also stimulated reciprocal sharing of new knowledge and skills between them, other farmers and service providers.
In 2008, an NGO showed videos about rice to farmers in 19 villages in Benin. A study in 2013 showed that farmers remembered the videos, even after five years had passed. In most of the villages at least some farmers experimented with rice farming or with new technology after the video screenings, which attracted large audiences of community members, including youth and women. Some of the villagers also visited extension agencies to get rice seed, and occasionally to seek more information.
The authors aimed at knowing how different learning methods, such as video shows and workshops, change farmers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices about botanical pesticides. This paper explains how video engages men and women farmers in spreading botanical pesticides across 12 villages in Bogra District, north-western Bangladesh.The authors conducted ex ante and ex post surveys among farmers from November 2009 to September 2010. For data analysis, the authors used t-test and McNemer and Wilcoxon sign rank tests.
In Bangladesh, strengthening agricultural innovation calls for facilitation of interactive communication and a wide range of mediation tasks within (and between) stakeholders operating in different social spheres. This paper examines how a public-sector agricultural extension agency has attempted to change its roles in implementing a major agricultural extension project in order to strengthen agricultural innovation.
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion in the scientific literature on the advantages and disadvantages of privatization of extension and advisory services and the shift from thinking in terms of the traditional Agricultural Knowledge System towards a broader Agricultural Innovation System.
This paper identifies the stakeholders of System of Rice Intensification (SRI), their roles and actions and the supporting and enabling environment of innovation in the state as the elements of the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) in SRI in Tripura state of India and studies the relationship matrix among the stakeholders. Methodology: A descriptive research design was followed to study the agricultural innovation system in SRI.