Browsing by Author "Klerkx, L."
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Item Agricultural innovation platforms in West Africa: How does strategic institutional entrepreneurship unfold in different value chain contexts?(Outlook on Agriculture, 2014-07) Van Paassen, A.; Klerkx, L.; Adu-Acheampong, R.; Adjei-Nsiah, S.; Zannoue, E.Inspired by innovation system theory, donors promote innovation platforms (IPs) to enhance collaboration for development. However, IP practice and impact are diverse: hence the question arises of whether and how IP approaches are able to create institutional change for the benefit of smallholders. The authors present the experience of an action research programme in West Africa and analyse the cases from a dialectic perspective on institutional entrepreneurship. The results show that a researcher-initiated open IP approach with clear principles and in-depth analysis of the value chain context is able to create reasonably effective IP coalitions for smallholder development. In a mature value chain, it may be possible to mobilize high-level actors, but IPs often start at a lower level and apply a two-pronged approach. They focus primarily on research and communication to improve smallholder technical and entrepreneurial practices, while diligently mobilizing high-level actors to attain critical regulatory and/or market support. Mobilization success is limited in contentious environments.Item Diagnosing constraints to market participation of small ruminant producers in northern Ghana: An innovation systems analysis(NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2012-07-10) Amankwah, K.; Klerkx, L.; Oosting, S.J.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; van der Zijpp, A.J.; Millar, D.This paper assesses why participation in markets for small ruminants is relatively low in northern Ghana by analysing the technical and institutional constraints to innovation in smallholder small ruminant production and marketing in Lawra and Nadowli Districts. The results show that the limitations experienced by smallholders, i.e., water shortages during the dry season, high mortality and theft of livestock, persist because of institutional constraints. These include structural limitations related to availability of arable lands, weak support systems for animal production and health services delivery, community values that are skewed towards crop production more than animal husbandry, ineffective traditional and formal structures for justice delivery, and gaps in the interaction between communities and district and national level organizations such as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, district assemblies, rural banks, and non-governmental organizations as well as traders and butchers. Confronted with such constraints, the strategies that most smallholders have adopted to be resilient entail diversified sources of livelihood, low input use in small ruminant production, and maintaining the herd as a capital stock and insurance. Only a few smallholders (i.e., ‘positive deviants’) engage in market or demand-driven production or exhibit successful strategies in small ruminant husbandry. It is argued in this paper that for the majority of smallholders, market production, which requires high levels of external inputs or intensification of resource use, is not a viable option. The main implications of the study are (1) that other institutional constraints than market access constraints should be addressed, (2) that commercial livestock production should not be idealized as the best or only option (as is being done in many contemporary interventions that aim at incorporating smallholders into commodity value chains), and (3) that different types of small ruminant system innovation pathways should be explored by making use of local positive deviants.Item Institutional dimensions of veterinary services reforms: responses to structural adjustment in Northern Ghana(International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2014-06) Amankwah, K.; Klerkx, L.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Karbo, N.; Oosting, S.J.; Leeuwis, C.; van der Zijpp, A.J.This study examines the effect of the post-1980s' structural adjustment reforms on the delivery and smallholders' use of veterinary services in two districts in Northern Ghana. Our analytical framework distinguishes between allocative, cognitive, and normative institutions to analyse the effects on four areas of service delivery: (1) prevention; (2) clinical services; (3) provision of drugs, vaccines, and other products; and (4) human health protection. The reforms were accompanied by substantial reductions in the allocation of both financial and human resources to public veterinary services; this in turn induced fragmentation in service supply, preferential service to progressive (or wealthy) farmers, and non-adherence to international protocols for livestock health reporting. A few communities self-organized to access veterinary services. Thus, the reforms triggered changes mostly in formal allocative institutions, but these triggered further changes in informal allocative, cognitive, and normative institutions that structured the impact of the reforms. The paper concludes that institutional change is not a one-off outcome of an intervention. Rather, such interventions trigger new dynamics that policy-makers and analysts need to take into account. This requires regular monitoring of anticipated and unanticipated effects of privatization and decentralization to enable policy adjustment. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.Item Looking at agricultural innovation platforms through an innovation champion lens: An analysis of three cases in West Africa(Outlook on Agriculture, 2013-09) Klerkx, L.; Adjei-Nsiah, S.; Adu-Acheampong, R.; Saïdou, A.; Zannou, E.; Soumano, L.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; van Paassen, A.; Nederlof, S.The concept of an innovation platform is increasingly used in interventions inspired by agricultural innovation systems thinking, as a way of bringing stakeholders from a sector together to enable transformative change. An essential role on such innovation platforms is thought to be that of the 'innovation champion', but this role has so far not been unravelled. In this paper, by applying insights from management science to analyse three innovation platforms in West Africa from the Convergence of Sciences - Strengthening Innovation Systems programme (CoS-SIS), different types of innovation champions are mapped. The authors conclude that making a distinction among different types of innovation champions can be useful in identifying members for innovation platforms, but that the specifics of agricultural innovation appear not to be adequately captured by roles attributed to existing categories of innovation champions. Further research is needed to ascertain whether other categories exist, and how different innovation champions interact over time on agricultural innovation platforms.