Research strategy. Since the late 1980s, CIAT has developed and promoted a wide variety of approaches and methodologies for participatory research and development. These participatory approaches emerged in response to low rates of adoption of CIAT’s bean and cassava varieties in Latin America in the 1980ties, and as CIAT expanded its role in Africa in the 1990ties, evolved as a strategy for demand-led technology development focused on strengthening local systems of innovation by the introduction of a range of participatory research methodologies.  

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Writing Rural Innovation Histories

CIAT first began constructing life histories of rural innovations towards the end of 2003. This methodology is part of a strategy promoted by the CGIAR and known as "institutional learning and change" or ILAC. The strategy "can be described as a 'process of reflection, reframing and use of lessons learned during the research process that results in changed behavior and improved performance'" of researchers, leaders, producers, and other actors involved in agricultural innovation.

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Contact: Andrea Carvajal

Quinoa: Recovering a Tradition

This story deals with a series of innovations introduced by members of the Guambiano indigenous community of the Quisgo Reservation, located in the municipality of Silvia, Cauca, Colombia, using the CIAl methodology. These innovations include the introduction of new varieties of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), an ancestral crop of the Incas of high nutritional value; a mechanical thresher; and the formation of a group of women leaders.

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CIAT in Africa

Enabling Rural Innovation in Africa: A Programme that Empowers Communities to Improve Livelihoods

A new brochure on CIAT's Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) programme in Africa is now available on-line. This brochure explains how the ERI programme is helping communities in eastern and southern Africa to improve household food security and income through more competitive agriculture. ERI aims to strengthen social organisation and entrepreneurial skills in rural communities, encouraging farmers to produce what they can market rather than market what they produce. This innovative approach emerged from CIAT's

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Empowering rural communities to innovate and exploit market opportunities for improved rural livelihoods

Globalization means that today's farmers are facing new threats and opportunities. These emerging trends may lead to the marginalization of some regions, countries or groups within countries, especially rural women and the poor. Therefore, rural communities must be able to innovate faster to adapt to and exploit these global trends. Within the Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) initiative, we aim to empower farmers' and communities' to experiment and develop market opportunities through the application of innovative participatory approaches, to capitalize on these emerging market opportunities. This approach, in which rural communities' become active partners in processes of co-innovation, predisposes fundamental changes in the behaviour, roles and functions of formal agricultural R&D service providers. As farmers successfully experiment and learn, the community begins to create a sustained and collective capacity for innovation to improve their livelihoods.

In eastern and southern Africa, CIAT is applying elements of the ERI approach in the action-research mode in partnership with national agricultural research and extension services (NARES), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and rural communities to empower communities.

For more information visit the CIAT in Africa Web site