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
Bangladesh
India
Ghana
Colombia
Sector
Niche with
strong growth
Export
orientation
Shrimp
X
X
Food processing
X
Medicinal plants
X
X
Vanilla
X
X
Pineapple
X
X
Traditional
sector in
transformation
Employment
potential
X
X
X
X
X
Cassava
processing
X
X
Cassava
processing
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