Facilitation has proved crucial for enabling the interaction of Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) actors to address the target and to innovate. This “Guide on training of facilitators of multi-actor agricultural innovation platform” is aimed at serving facilitators when multi-actor agricultural innovation platforms (MAIPs) are organized. Since MAIPs are still an emerging concept, there are not many cases to refer to.

Multi-actors innovation platforms (MAIPs) are increasingly deployed as a model for participatory and inclusive innovation to address the challenges of sustainability in complex systems like the agri-food systems. The facilitation of co-innovation and multi-actor partnerships is critical to the success of MAIPs, as a common lesson learned across the multitude of initiatives around the world. The guideline was developed for Master Trainers to train MAIP facilitators. The guideline first gives an introduction to the definiton, principles, design, establishment and facilitation of MAIPs.

The publication reviews forty years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South.