| Call for Full Paper Submissions
We would like to invite participants of the Innovation Africa Symposium to submit (or resubmit) their full paper contribution following the recommended guidelines by Monday 8th January 2007. Only papers submitted by the deadline and adhering to the guidelines set will be considered for publication.
Contact: Pascal Sanginga or Ann Waters-Bayer
Symposium Products
 Book of Abstracts
 Presentations
Symposium Programme and Participants
 Points of View: Agricultural Innovation. New Agriculturist.
An international Symposium  on agricultural innovation systems in Africa was held on 20-23 November 2006 in Kampala, Uganda. It was jointly organised by CIAT, IFPRI-ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research programme of the International Food Policy Research Institute), ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute), IIRR-Africa (International Institute for Rural Reconstruction), and PROLINNOVA (Promoting Local Innovation). Funding was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation with additional financial assistance from the World Bank and the Ford Foundation. The Innovation Africa Symposium brought together about 140 researchers and practitioners mostly from Africa, (and some from Asia and South America) involved in innovation systems to share current thinking, experiences, advances, and lessons.
The Symposium began in the rural environment in Uganda, giving participants an opportunity to communicate with local people. Prolinnova–Uganda (Ronald Lutalo) and IIRR–Africa (Letitia Lungu) arranged parallel one-day field trips to visit farmer associations and innovators in horticultural, cropping and livestock systems.
On the second day, a keynote paper by Niels Röling from the Netherlands gave an enlightening overview of conceptual and methodological developments in innovation systems and charged up energies and thinking that maintained momentum through the entire three days of presentations and discussions. Perspectives on innovation from the health and educational sectors were introduced to the discussion by Joanna Chataway from the Open University in the UK and by Norman Clark from the African Centre for Technology Studies in Kenya. A second keynote paper by Anil Gupta on the following day made participants aware of the Honeybee activities to recognise, document, enhance and protect grassroots innovations in India.
The papers, posters and discussions focused around five main themes:
1) Concepts and methods in agricultural innovation systems (AIS).
2) Partnerships and other forms of social capital in AIS.
3) Institutional, policy and knowledge-sharing mechanisms to support AIS.
4) Enhancing local innovation processes.
5) Market-led innovation in agriculture.
6) Building innovation capacity.
The concepts of innovation among the Symposium participants were fairly diverse, with obvious differences between those who regarded innovation as adoption of technologies introduced from Research (induced innovation) and those who regarded it as the outcome of social learning by many different actors. However, by the end of the Symposium, there was shared recognition of the need to create space and incentives for promoting collaboration between farmers, research and extension services and the private sector to develop improved technologies and institutional arrangements that can alleviate poverty. It was noted that very few people from the private sector and smallholder farmer organisations took part in the Symposium, and that these key actors need to be included in activities concerned agricultural innovation systems.
In his closing words, Peter Matlon from the Rockefeller Foundation drew attention to the need for: 1) further evolution in institutional structures and mindsets, 2) closer interaction with the private sector, 3) reflection on factors that constrain the sustainability and scalability of innovation system approaches, and 4) strategic non-confrontational communication to change policy. He warned against institutionalising innovation system approaches in a way that builds too much structure and bureaucracy, as this could stifle creativity, opportunism and serendipity. He stressed the need to create an enabling environment for bottom-up innovation to happen.
The Symposium ended on an upbeat note, with enthusiasm among the participants to implement what they had learned, to share this learning with colleagues in their own and other institutions, and to continue collaboration and networking. There was general agreement that a follow-up conference should be held in another part of Africa in 2–3 years’ time to share experiences in multi-stakeholder partnerships to enhance agricultural innovation systems.
Papers from the Symposium will be selected for publication in a book and possibly also in a special issue of an international journal. The New Agriculturist provides a brief overview of a selection of participants' viewpoints on agricultural innovation systems and how they should be developed and enhanced, so as to increase the impact of formal agricultural research. The organisers plan to bring out a shorter booklet on Innovation Africa to be disseminated as part of a communication strategy to raise awareness and to change minds and policies.
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Symposium Organisers