New Pathways to Innovation: Creating conditions in which West African smallholders can capture opportunity

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.