Bringing New Ideas into Practice : Experiments with Agricultural Innovation

African smallholder farmers need to intensify their production systems and adapt to continuous, often unforeseen and sudden changes in their environment, which requires continuous innovation. An important question for policy makers and managers in the field of agricultural development is how to best invest resources to support agricultural innovation. In this book, we document lessons from Research Into Use (RIU) in Africa, a United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) funded programme. The programme aimed at stimulating rural economic development by enhancing agricultural innovation. RIU explored different approaches of promoting innovation in agriculture. This book analyses the experiences of three RIU Africa Country Programmes, which used innovation platforms to facilitate innovation, and two best-bet projects, which used a competitive funding mechanism to support private sector driven initiatives to get research outcomes into use. The analysis of the five cases did allow for the development of an analytical model that can assist in decision-making on investments in agricultural innovation. Interventions aimed at agricultural development through innovation would do well to consider two types of results: household level impact at scale, and an improved capacity to innovate. Three interlinked components, needs and opportunity identification, experimentation and bringing into routine use, were distinguished to analyse the process of getting from new ideas to impact at scale. The roles of different stakeholders are discussed.