Building agricultural innovation capacity in developing countries:

requirements and lessons

Andy Hall, United Nations University, MERIT

Main messages• Developing agricultural innovation capacity

needs to go beyond strengthening research.

• Priorities are building linkages and new ways of working that promote interaction between research, enterprise and developmental players

• Interventions need to have a long term perspective and give sufficient emphasis to facilitating institutional learning.

Innovation capacity, what does it mean

• Scientific and other skills and information in research, enterprises, training organisations, developmental organisation.

• The practices and routines (institutions), patterns of interaction within an economy and policies needed to create and put knowledge into productive use

• The skills and IIP needed to respond to an evolving set of challenges and opportunities.

• Learning-by-doing whereby organisations engaging in the innovation process continuously adapt ways of working and routines – institutional learning --, incrementally improving their ability to utilise knowledge and information

Agricultural innovation capacity: recent evidence

• Recent study with the World Bank: Enabling agricultural innovation: how to go beyond strengthening research systems.

• Applied the innovation systems concept to explore innovation capacity

• 8 sectors, 4 countries

Case studies

Country Sector Niche withstrong growth

Exportorientation

Traditionalsector in

transformation

Employmentpotential

Bangla-desh

Shrimp X X X

Food processing X X X

India Medicinal plants X X X X

Vanilla X X

Ghana Pineapple X X

Cassavaprocessing

X X

Colombia Cassavaprocessing

X X

Cut flowers X X X

What drives innovation?

• Two distinctive scenarios emerged

• Usually. Sectors emerge because entrepreneurs identify new market opportunities and innovate to gain market access. Subsequently falter as can’t continuously innovate in dynamic markets

• Occasionally. Research interventions promote innovation when organised in ways that promote interaction.

Innovation capacity development needs

• Investing in agricultural research alone is not enough

• Linkages and patterns of interaction needed for innovation are often missing and need to be strengthened

• Lack of interaction is a reflection of deep rooted habits and practices (i.e. institutions) in both public and private sector organisations and civil society.

• Institutional change – new ways of working -- are needed that can support stronger patterns of interaction. between research, enterprise and developmental organisations

National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), India

• NAIP is 6 year programme of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) supported by the World Bank.

• Builds on earlier NATP that provided resources for conducting research and skill up-grading in frontier areas of science.

• Novel feature of NAIP is its use of competitive funds to establish consortia of research, enterprise and developmental organisations on selected themes.

• Responds explicitly to an identified need to invest in building partnerships to improve the relevance and uptake of research in India.

Early lessons

• Design reflects Indian research system and innovation capacity context -- earlier reforms and long debate on public private partnerships

• Allowed diversity of consortium composition and leadership to match themes (not just PPP)

• Used themes on improving value chains to attract private sector. Used Theme on sustainable rural livelihoods to attract novel consortia on development

• Importance of complimentary investments in (i) skill development on partnering and (ii) on consortium formation – used a helpdesk and sensitization workshops

• Explicit efforts to derive institutional lessons and distil principles for wider diffusion and use could add further value

Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotech Programme

• Long term donor support to focus agricultural biotech on the needs of poor farmers -- 10 plus years – recognised need to socialise scientists to a new way of working.

• Explicit focus on building alliances between scientific and NGO communities using research support provided through a competitive fund

• A novel feature was the integrated bottom up approach (IBU) -- involved undertaking detailed needs assessment exercises with farmers to set overall guiding priorities for the programme

• Programme coordination outside the agricultural research system to avoid capture by research driven interests.

Lessons

• NGO’s rather than scientists undertook the needs assessment exercise to set priorities. This strengthened the developmental relevance of priorities

• Early wins with simple biotech demonstrated to reluctant scientists the value of working with NGOs in the field.

• The programme recognised that institutional change was a long term goal, but could have invested in facilitating institutional learning to speed this process and diffuse to others.

• Programme was reluctant to partner with the private sector and so an opportunity to build interaction with potentially important players was lost.

• The coordinating unit started to evolve into a consortium broker when donor money was reduced

Policy considerations • Institutional change is at the heart of innovation

capacity development and requires a long term commitment

• Competitive research funds can be used to provide incentives to build linkages – Only suitable in some cases and might be starting point for other initiatives, industry associations etc.

• Incentives for building links and interaction needs to be coupled with substantial investments in skill development to help adjust to new ways of working

Policy considerations

• Coordinating organisations from outside the research system might be useful, but not always possible.

• Facilitating institutional learning could add significant value to capacity development initiatives.

• Shift from prescriptions to principles to be interpreted locally. Requires strengthening of innovation policy capacity