The complete document detailing the six policy briefs is available as a PDF download.

The six policy briefs have examined the governance challenges related to market-, state- and community-based led efforts in implementing InnovAfrica innovations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania to identify key areas for focusing governance pathways and suggest measures to facilitate the scaling up of SAIs, IIAs, and EASs.

The key policy findings can be relevant not only for each case country but also for the large set of African countries that currently aim to promote agricultural innovations.

The governments must also focus on the role that

• the private sector,
• the government and
• third sector

currently play in the agricultural innovation to make agricultural innovation sustainable from an economic, social and environmental perspective.

Government efforts usually put emphasis on the supply side elements rather than on the demand side. For example, instead of focusing on the supply of subsidized inputs (e.g., fertilizer, seeds), government could support a conducive environment for input and output markets. Such support could include

• investment in farm-to-market roads to improve market access by farmers,
• incentives for private sector, community-based organizations and other development partners to market Brachiaria and other goods and services, and
• provision of modest funding for research on agricultural innovations.

Moreover, governments have instituted several agricultural policies and programs that can facilitate the diffusion of InnovAfrica’s agricultural innovations. However, these policies and programs are poorly enforced.

For these to effectively generate agricultural innovation adoption and scaling up, operational aspects of their implementation should be carefully designed. Monitoring and evaluation systems are needed to evaluate if specific policies and programs are achieving their objectives of boosting technology dissemination and to be able to arrange for corrective adaptations when necessary.

Furthermore, a combination of

• public (e.g., government institutions including research),
• private (e.g., seed companies, farmers) and
• third sector (NGOs, community-based organizations)
  institutions are critical in effectively implementing and sustaining agricultural innovations such as VKCs and MAPs. There seems to be limited efforts to involve third sectors (e.g., NGOs), for example in MAPs. Involving the third sector may ensure not only broader participation but also sustainability of existing agricultural innovations such as VKCs and MAPs.

Introduction

Main Messages

• The most important barriers to SAI adoption are poor markets, limited access to extension services, credit opportunities, small land size, gender inequality and lack of labour.
• The case countries have policies in place to overcome the barriers, but implementation capability is a challenge.
• The pathways to address the challenges include, land reforms, better transport, extension, cooperatives, depot/storage, micro credit, seed access, and gender awareness.

The objective of the study was to assess the main organizational and structural barriers to adoption and propose strategies for enhancing productivity in six case countries in Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania). The approach was based upon literature review, focus group discussions, and a questionnaire survey carried out in six case countries involving 3,814 respondents. The survey data was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The below tables illustrate the organizational and structural barriers to adoption of four Sustainable Agriculture intensification (SAI) technologies (i.e. improved seeds, crop rotation, intercropping and Brachairia forage) at country level and suggest pathways for how to overcome these barriers.

Sustainable Agriculture intensification (SAI) technologies

1. Improved seeds

2. Crop rotation

3. Intercropping

4. Brachiaria forage systems

Conclusion

The suggested pathways call for political will and commitment in relation to prioritize agriculture as promised in the Malabo declaration and Sustainable Development Goal 2. It might appear easy to list what to do, but less easy to explain how it should be done. Strengthening the capacity and quality of the extension and advisory services and improving the access to credit and markets will demand resources and capabilities that might be hard to come up with. In similar ways, structural barriers such as small land size and gender inequality are demanding challenges that need to be addressed both at national policy level and local levels.

Introduction

Increasing smallholders’ productivity is expected to enhance food security in Africa. A paradigm shift towards SAI and innovation is required. Creating an enabling institutional environment will accelerate agricultural change. This task looks at the role played by institutions and policies in supporting the development of SAI systems by small-scale farmers in the cereal-legume and livestock feed (Brachiaria fodder) sub-sectors within the case-studies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania. 

Methodology

The following steps and/or approaches were used:

Step 1: producing intervention logic diagrams (Figure 1) to identify national/local general/sectoral policies, governmental/private/pluralistic institutions and farm-/value chain-level barriers in the implementation of SAI systems.

Step 2: building Venn diagrams (Figure 2) to visualize formal institutions involved in extension agricultural services, and assess their weight and their sectoral/intersectoral links.

Step 3: conducting econometric analysis to estimate the effect of households’ socio-economic characteristics, extension services, policy context, value chain actors to adopt the sustainable agricultural practices.

Main findings

Pluralistic EASs exist in the six case countries, with different degree of engagement by private firms, third sector and research institutions. For example:

• In Ethiopia, extension services are mainly provided by government agencies which benefit of relatively high public expenditure and innovation diffusion effectiveness.
• In Malawi and Kenya, knowledge dissemination is conducted through private firms, non-governmental organizations and farmer-to-farmer actions which support interventions from the public sector.
• In Rwanda, a relevant role in information dissemination is played by governmental research institutions.
• In Tanzania, farmers have relatively higher asset levels and would probably be able to pay for the extension services. There would be space for private sector to provide such services.
• In South Africa, innovation dissemination relies mostly on the farmer-to-farmer approach.

Summary

Current sectoral policies and institutional arrangements in the case countries are not sufficiently conducive for the diffusion and establishment of agricultural innovations mainly due to:

• Poor knowledge and organizational capacity and limited resources of EASs;
• Ineffective policy implementation;
• Limited organizational structures for the smallholders; and
• Minimal access to markets and financial services in rural areas

References and links

www.innovafrica.eu

Understanding the challenges

In general, agricultural policies and institutional arrangements such as public or private services are currently not sufficiently conducive for diffusion and establishment of agricultural innovations. There are substantial variations among the six African countries, however, the general findings were: (i) Insufficient capability to implement policy, (ii) Profitability in agriculture is low and risk is high, (iii) Limited access to markets and financial services, (iv) Smallholders are poorly organized, and (v) Capacity and quality of extension and advisory services are poor

Malabo Declaration: Regarding suggestions for possible adjustments in policies and institutional arrangements, the Mapping agriculture policies and institutions report align itself with the African Union Malabo Declaration recommendations (AU 2018), which emphasizes areas such as increasing productivity in agriculture, improving access of men and women smallholders to financial and agricultural advisory services, more funds to the agricultural sector to meet the CAADP target of 10 percent, enhance resilience to climate related risks, facilitate and promote intra-regional African trade in agricultural commodities, and improve child nutrition.

Innovations: In InnovAfrica, extension and advisory service innovations such as village knowledge centres, farmer participatory research teams, farmer-to-farmer-extension and integrated farm planning play important roles. There is a fundamental challenge that extension and advisory service do not have the capacity to better cover the large number of men and women smallholders in Africa. Different kinds of partnership and cost-effective ways of strengthening EAS are of great importance for technological innovations to be scaled up. At policy level, more attention should be given to ensure that smart solutions such as ICT are explored to strengthen EAS. However, if the frame conditions for agricultural development are not conducive e.g., in relation to affordable inputs, it will be difficult for EAS to achieve successful impact.

Seed systems: Findings regarding use of seeds indicate that formal seed supply systems play a major role for a few crops such as maize and soybean, but even for these crops a large share of the seeds planted are local varieties and/or obtained through informal seed systems. For most of the crops the latter is the norm. While there is clearly a potential for improving access to improved varieties with a high yield potential through strengthening formal seed delivery systems, it is also necessary to ensure that informal seed systems have the legal space to operate in parallel with formal systems. There is great potential for integrating formal and informal elements through farmer group production of seeds that can be sold with Quality Declared Seed (QDS) labelling.

Women and youth: Since women and youth are the main targets of InnovAfrica innovations, WP5 integrate the findings from WP1 to make sure that special attention is given to these two groups when it comes to agricultural policy and institutions in relation to the low engagement of youth in agriculture and the situation for women farmers regarding discrimination, high total workload and limited access to production resources and services.

Up-scaling: For all the six countries, successful up-scaling of InnovAfrica innovations will, to a large degree, depend upon conducive policy frame conditions and enabling environments that promote agricultural development, food and nutrition security. Since all the country teams were involved in writing the task 5.1 report, interdisciplinary capacity was developed in the field of linking InnovAfrica innovations with frame conditions of importance for successful up-scaling. At Multi Actor Platform (MAP) meetings, the findings from the mapping agriculture policies and institutions are discussed in relation to successful diffusion and establishment of agricultural innovations towards sustainable agriculture and enhanced food and nutrition security in Africa.

Country specific recommendations

 References

Haug et al., 2018: Mapping agriculture policies and institutions (D5.1)
www.innovafrica.eu