The Convergence of Sciences programme has spent the past decade exploring new pathways for agricultural innovation that focus on enabling smallholders to capture opportunity. Its approach relies on bringing together different actors who can achieve major change in an agriculture sector and create new conditions at system levels higher than those of the field and the farm. The interaction of farmers, scientists, administrators, policymakers and other decision makers can remove constraints and create opportunities at these levels. This publication documents some of the programme’s outcomes, approaches and methods so as to allow others to draw out lessons for future programme design and further research.
This report sets out the synthesis of work carried out within the framework of the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) Secretariat Initiative on “The family economy and agricultural innovation: towards new partnerships”. The initiative aimed to stimulate analyses, collect...
This paper compares lessons learned from nine studies that explored institutional determinants of innovation towards sustainable intensification of West African agriculture. The studies investigated issues relating to crop, animal, and resources management in Benin, Ghana, and Mali
This report documents the history of the systems of rice intensification (SRI, for short) in India in the last few years and presents some of the institutional changes and challenges that SRI throws up. The first part looks at the...
This brief report lays out ten theories of advocacy and policy change. These theories are intended to articulate the policy making process and identify causal connections supported by research to explain how and why a change may or may not...
This paper aims to set out for policy makers and a range of actors across donor/practitioner/research communities, a series of challenges and opportunities for support to capacity development. It pays particular attention to a systemic approach for understanding and supporting...