South Asia

Civil Society Lessons on promoting rural innovation for the poor
A DFID funded project on investigating civil society lessons on promoting rural innovation for the poor has recently been completed.   The final technical report can be viewed here.  One of the unusual features of the project was the establishment of a Rural Innovation Policy Working Group – RIPWG for short.  The group produces a regular newsletter called the RIPWIG Reporter. 

	Final Technical Report
	RIPWiG Reporter

Extension and Rural Credit
LINK South Asia Director, Rasheed Sulaiman V attended the National Symposium on Rural Credit for Inclusive Growth organized by the Reserve Bank of India and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) on 12-13 January 2007 in Pune, India. He presented a paper “Extension services in India: Emerging Challenges and Ways Forward” which argued for a broader mandate for extension and wider partnerships in order to achieve this. Based on a synthesis of select cases from India, the paper illustrates how agencies dealing with credit, extension and markets have partnered to promote rural innovation and discusses its implications for extension reform.
The paper is currently being revised, but the presentation of the paper is available.

download presentation

National Consultations on Agricultural Research and Extension
LINK Associate Rajeswari Raina and South Asia Director, Rasheed Sulaiman V participated in the consultations on the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) on Agricultural Research and Extension on 15 January 2007 in New Delhi. The NKC has been constituted by the Prime Minister of India with the mandate of “devising and guiding reforms that will transform India into a strong and vibrant knowledge economy”. 

Bio-fuel Study
Maija Hirvonen, a PhD student in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom recently visited UNU-MERIT's LINK South Asia Rural Innovation Policy Studies Hub in Hyderabad as part of her preliminary research into the evolution of bio-fuels policies and innovation practice in India.

East Africa

Consolidating LINK’s regional network outreach in East Africa
LINK researcher Mirjam Steglich from the East Africa hub, has recently moved offices from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya where she is hosted by the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS).
ACTS is a science, technology and environment policy think-tank which generates and disseminates new knowledge through policy analysis, advocacy and outreach. It was established in order to strengthen the capacities of African countries and institutions in harnessing science and technology for sustainable development. Member states include Kenya, Malawi, Malta, Uganda and Ghana. ACTS works with partners and networks including academic and research institutions, national governments, UN bodies, regional and international processes and NGOs (http://www.acts.or.ke/prog/).
The Centre’s the members of staff are lead by Executive Director Prof. Judy Wakhungu, and LINK Associate, Prof. Norman Clark is the Director of Research.
ACTS runs the Science and Technology Policy Training Institute which brings together policy makers from the public institutions and research organisations as well as the private sector and civil society. ACTS recently held an Energy and Environment Training Course (http://www.acts.or.ke/institute/) for policy makers where Mirjam Steglich assisted in the course facilitation. The course focused on the policy making processes that would encourage increased bio-fuel utilization in East Africa.
Mirjam is currently following up an earlier case study on innovation capacity in Kenya’s horticulture sector. Among other things, LINK and ACTS are collaborating on a new project “Innovation Response Capacity In Relation To Livestock Related Emergencies in East Africa”.

Diagnostic Study of Agricultural Innovation Capacity, Sierra Leon
Norman Clark is currently leading a team of Sierra Leonean’s undertaking a diagnostic study of agricultural innovation capacity for DFID’s Research into Use Programme.

National Farmers Festival, Ethiopia
LINK PhD Researcher Ekin Keskin attended the first national farmers festival in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia in December ’06.  The purpose of the festival was to strengthen and underline the key role of farmers in development. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Addisu Legesse said that agricultural productivity has been increasing over the past three years through the implementation of the Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy.
Many participants came from all over the country and also some took part to showcase their products and share their experiences in the exhibition.  Ethiopian Livestock Traders Professional Association and Elfora, a private agro industrial company which focuses on livestock, also participated in the exhibition.

West African Region

Collaboration with FARA and Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme
During January 2007 Andy Hall conducted a 6 day training workshop in Kano Nigeria on Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IARAD) for Taskforce members of the Kano-Katsina-Maradi Pilot Learning site of the Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA CP).  The workshop introduced the innovation systems concept and explained the implications of using this concept for project design, monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment.  The SSA CP is managed by the Forum for Agricultural Research for Africa (FARA). Its objectives include developing a learning-based approach to improving the impact of agricultural research in Sub-Saharan Africa.   FARA has expressed an interest in partnering with UNU-MERIT / LINK to both provide long term support to the 3 pilot learning sites of the SSA CP as well as to jointly learn some of the generic lessons about institutional change and capacity development from the programme.

Technical and institutional dimensions of scaling-up innovation: The case of NERICA riceUNU-MERIT through its LINK initiative is collaborating with the UNU-Institute for Natural Resources for Africa (INRA) to find ways of combining contemporary thinking and policy research on innovation with bio-physical research on natural resources in Africa.  To further this objective Daniel Dalohoun has been appointed as a researcher and will be stationed at UNU-INRA in Accra, Ghana.  Daniel, who is from Benin, recently completed his PhD at UNU-MERIT and will be undertaking research on the institutional dimensions of up-scaling NERICA rice in West Africa. more

Andean Region

LINK and CONDESAN have developed a concept note for a joint innovation capacity development project referred to as the “Innovation Dynamo”.