Innovations for Agricultural Development in Africa

1. Innovations for Agricultural Development in Africa African Development Bank Agriculture & Agro-industry Department Tunis, Tunisia, 30-31 October 2007

2. Presentation Outline • Background • Reversing the decline in African agriculture • Innovation and Innovation Systems as potential models for reversing the decline • Application of innovation systems in African Agriculture and the Bank’s possible support towards leveraging their benefits

3. Setting the stage: what we do • Responding to needs and requests of RMC and in line with CAADP • Most of the projects are designed to address the greatest challenge in Africa: poverty. • Poverty is both a cause and effect of hunger. Many hungry people live in ‘poverty traps’ beyond the reach of markets • Agriculture is the engine of growth for development and should be the driving force for poverty eradication

4. MDG TARGETS: Maintaining a “business as usual” stance, SSA will not attain key MDG targets Source: World Bank 2005 IFPRI studies project that the most effective way to attain MDG targets is through higher investments in: (1) rural roads (2) agricultural research; (3) irrigation; (4) Clean water and (5) education

6. MDG targets: The poor and hungry: • Live mainly in rural areas and reliant on rain-fed, subsistence agriculture • Are unable to grow or buy enough food to meet their dietary requirements • Are highly vulnerable to risks beyond their control

7. Cycle underlying the decline in African livelihoods Unfavourable economic returns to agricultural production Unsustainable agricultural practices

8. Most of Africa’s gains in food production have been through expansion

9. Local variety Experimental African agriculture has registered some successes • Varietal improvements (nerica rice mosaic resistant cassava, IR Maize etc) • Increased use of inputs (soil fertility, fodder, pest management) • Improved water capture and use (irrigation) • Infrastructure (roads, dams) to support the above • However, these have not had wide scale impact due to: • Poor linkages between production, processing, trade/marketing & consumption • Inadequate human & financial resources • Weak institutional frameworks including paternerships for addressing these issues

10. Value addition & markets Successful out grower schemes have demonstrated the benefits of linking production to markets and the role of policies and institutions in assuring success

11. Reversing the decline of African agriculture requires: Extending the area under sustainable Land Management and reliable Increasing Food Supply and Reducing Hunger: Strengthening national and regional food security Improving Infrastructure and Trade-related Capacities for Market Access Agricultural Research, Technology Uptake Adoption Interventions should be systemic  calls for attention to linkages among the pillars  in turn calls for partnership and institutional mechanisms for working in this mode

12. Innovation Systems (IS) and Partnerships The concept of Innovation Systems traces its roots to the search for an analytical framework to explain patterns of industrial growth in Japan, Europe and East Asia in the 1980s • Success of industrial economies was catalysed by effective “national systems of innovation”—networks of groups and individuals who worked in institutional environments that promoted sharing of knowledge and learning. • Innovations rather than research investments per se were key to economic growth • Innovation was a social process of interacting and learning—i.e. partnership was essential to innovation

13. But what is innovation? • Innovation is the process of : • of creating and putting into use combinations of knowledge from different/multiple sources to create development impact • obtaining commercial value from inventions • Research creates knowledge and technology; the process of innovation goes further to include putting that knowledge into use • Innovating involves multiple actors working together as elements of the same system

14. Innovation System An innovation system comprises • Organisations, enterprises and individuals that together demand and supply knowledge and technology, and • The rules and mechanisms by which these actors interact • The IS concept is a framework for analysing the roles and interaction of actors in a system (e.g. an agricultural development system) in order to generate innovations (institutional, policy technological) that lead to development outcomes • Has proven its value in industrialised countries  credible premise for building/strengthening partnerships

15. Elements of an Agricultural IS • Demand domain • Consumers of agricultural products • Policy makers Research domain Producers of mainly codified knowledge NARS, IARCs, Universities and tertiary colleges, private research organisations Enterprise domain Users of codified knowledge, producers of tacit knowledge Farmers, agro-industries and dealers, transporters Intermediary domain Service providers and intermediaries NGOs, extension services, farmer and trade associations, donors Support structures Banking and financial system, transport and marketing infrastructure, education system and professional networks

16. Example of an Agricultural Innovation System The linkages are just as important as the actors Practitioners Rural communities Market value chains Researchers Policy makers Innovation platform Capacity and competence of actors and institutions in Project cycle Evidence based Methodologies and approaches to deliver impact Institutional policies that enable delivery of benefits to actors

17. How does innovation take place? • Entrepreneurs and others identify an opportunity or a threat • Form alliances (partnerships) to access new ideas, resources or markets and learn from each other. • Reconfigure patterns of alliance when opportunities or threats change. • A process self organisation of different players to access and put knowledge into use – organising for innovation • Learning by doing helps build the capacity for self organisation.

18. What prevents innovation in the real world? Lack of self-organisation by the key actors is the main impediment to Innovation. This is in turn attributed to: • High risks, weak incentives & highly dynamic contexts • Existing institutional arrangements discourage self-organisation • Mistrust by potential actors • Isolation by key players e.g. research • Weaknesses and lack of organisation by potential key players e.g. private sector

19. Lessons from Bank Projects • Support to research institutions (WARDA, CORAF, ASRECA , FARA, NARI, etc.) and RMCS to implementation to generate knowledge and improved technologies and innovations (project and programs) • Most of the projects/programs have R & D (Action-Research) components in projects, which has generated knowledge and innovations:But Difficulties in scaling –up:Example of the NERICA Rice variety with higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein than Asian and African parents. • Need to work closely with poor farmers and development partners to conduct research for development : innovation networks, platforms & alliance creation and capacity building at all levels (farmers, policy makers, and research institutions etc.) for advocacy to increase the sharing and the use of research results • Cape Verde: Santiago Island watershed management and rehabilitation project: Construction and rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure (dikes and canals using farmers associations has led to rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems and sustainable agricultural development using improved farmers knowledge and practices: Replicable project in island countries in arid zones

20. Issues for further discussion • Enhancing the innovation capacity for African agricultural development • Knowledge base on best practices for agricultural innovation • Projects leveraging innovation systems methods as pathways for impact • Innovations and best practices both within and outside the Bank pertinent to RMCs development agenda and put into productive use with support of Africa Development Partners • Synthesis and sharing of lessons and experiences from comparable institutions (e.g. World Bank)—concerted action to avoid re-inventing the wheel

21. Thank you for the attention