This study introduces a framework for managing information flow in innovation systems. An organisation's capacity to receive information, to share it with others and to learn from it is assumed to be the key factor that shapes the flow patterns and, hence, the performance of the innovation system concerned. The framework is applied to characterise the information structure underlying the agricultural innovation system of Azerbaijan and to develop an information strategy for the system to accelerate the information flow.
The Feed the Future Uganda Agricultural Inputs Activity is to increase the use of high quality agricultural inputs in Uganda by increasing availability of high quality inputs to farmers in Feed the Future focus districts, and decreasing the prevalence of counterfeit agricultural inputs.
The Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development (EHELD) project funded by USAID aims to build regionally recognized and competitive academic Centers of Excellence (CoEs) that produce graduates who become leading professionals and entrepreneurs in the fields of agriculture and engineering in Liberia.
The Women’s Leadership Program in Paraguay is a three-year (2012-2015) higher education partnership between the National University of Asuncion’s School of Agricultural Sciences in Paraguay and the University of Florida (UF) in the United States.The program supports national and local development goals in Paraguay that promote gender equality and female empowerment in the agricultural sector.
The objective of this Guide is to recommend a process and set of steps for an organization to prepare, establish and to develop effective Water Users Associations (WUA) suitable to Tajikistan. It summarizes lessons learned in Tajikistan, by two donor finance projects, which established and trained 97 WUAs. Establishment of WUAs is essential in order to solve existing problems in the irrigation sector and other challenges faced by farmers and other water users3 .
This paper identifies market failures that limit agricultural R&D for Africa and other resource-poor environments, and proposes a way to complement existing institutions with cash prizes for the dissemination of successful new technologies adopted by low-income farmers. The proposed prize institution would use agronomic experiments and farm surveys to document the value of innovations after their initial diffusion, and offer payments in proportion to estimated social benefits in target regions.
The agricultural innovation system can be strengthened by increasing the learning capacity of research and field organisations. Participatory methods were developed to study three dimensions of the capacity of such organisations in Nicaragua to access and analyse information, highly correlated to learning capacity – the individual routines of their professionals, the formal procedures of the organisation and the organisation's use of collaborative projects to strengthen core operations.
This paper discusses the challenges and determinants of agro-operations and innovation initiatives in developing countries. With particular reference to the Caribbean region, available country statistics and data are analysed. A generic model of collaborative innovation for agriculture that stresses collaboration among the stakeholders (government, knowledge institutions, public and private firms and others) is described.
Public–private partnerships that aim at the development of innovations have gained increasing attention from governments, public research and private companies, because they enable partners to draw from complementary resources and profit from synergy and joint learning. This article develops arguments for when partnerships should form and compares them with experiences in real partnership cases in Latin America.
Empirical studies on agricultural technology adoption generally divide a population into adopters and nonadopters, and analyse the reasons for adoption or nonadoption at a point in time. In reality, technology adoption is not a one-off static decision, rather it involves a dynamic process in which information gathering, learning and experience play pivotal roles, particularly in the early stage of adoption. A conceptual framework for an adoption pathway is suggested in which farmers move from learning to adoption, to continuous or discontinuous use over time.