Innovation platforms can be complex and challenging so effective monitoring is critical to ensure that they function effectively and achieve their intended purposes. A monitoring system is a collection of methods and tools to track and measure innovation activities, processes among partners, and the results of these processes. This brief describes what a monitoring system does, who is involved, how it works, and what to do with the findings. It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.

Growing local and informal markets in Asia and Africa provide both challenges and opportunities for small holders. In developing countries, market failures often lead to suboptimal performance of the value chains and limited and inequitable participation of the poor. In recent years, innovation platforms have been promoted as mechanisms to stimulate and support multistakeholder collaboration in the context of research for development. They are recognized as having the potential to link value chain actors, and enhance communication and collaboration to overcome market failures.

The Africa Research In Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program comprises three research-for-development projects supported by the United States Agency for International Development as part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative.

The workshop was attended by over 50 people including partners from CGIAR centres, Regional Research Institutes and Centres, Universities, woredas and kebeles working with Africa RISING. The workshop discussed the use of different approaches, methods and tools for the efficient and
sustained functioning of innovation platforms (IPs) that could improve research and subsequent scaling up of suitable technologies and value chains to improve livelihoods.

The presentation is for the ILRI Innovation Platform (IP) Training Workshop. At the end of this session participants will be able to: Capture basic concepts in IP monitoring and evaluation; Comprehend why it is important to monitor and evaluate IPs; Contribute to fine-tuning of Africa RISING IP monitoring and evaluation framework; Identify IP TG members championing the M&E work at the research sites.

There have been repeated calls for a ‘new professionalism’ for carrying out agricultural research for development since the 1990s. At the centre of these calls is a recognition that for agricultural research to support the capacities required to face global patterns of change and their implications on rural livelihoods, requires a more systemic, learning focused and reflexive practice that bridges epistemologies and methodologies.

The presentation was given in January 2009 and introduced why a new approach for livestock development for poverty alleviation was desirable, innovation, innovation systems and value chains, building of innovation platforms, learning-oriented monitoring and evaluation, and scaling up and out.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) implements participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) systems as a means of strengthening learning, self-reflection and facilitating institutional learning and change (ILAC) processes within Research and Development (R&D) institutions and local communities in Africa.

Members of the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance were working to improve their capacity in planning and management through the introduction of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) systems to national agricultural research and extension institutes (NARES) and their partners in Eastern and Southern Africa. The national bean programmes within NARES in six countries had been successful in institutionalising PM&E and in encouraging partners involved in the dissemination of bean technologies to incorporate PM&E systems in their projects.

A Training Workshop for Trainers in Results-Based Monitoring & Evaluation (RBM&E) was held at Adama from 02 to 05 July of 2012. This Workshop was jointly organized by the Oromia Bureau of Agriculture (OBoA) and Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) project upon the request from OBoA. This is the 6th training workshop and it is part of the capacity building program that IPMS provided for the four regions where the project was operating and for federal MoA. Twenty two trainees (19 males and 3 females) have been trained with full attendance.