Browsing by Author "Kossou, D."
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Item Can convergence of agricultural sciences support innovation by resource-poor farmers in Africa? The cases of Benin and Ghana(International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2007-01) Van Huis, A.; Jiggins, J.; Kossou, D.; Leeuwis, C.; Röling, N.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Struik, P.C.; Tossou, R.C.The article introduces the IJAS special issue on the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) research programme that took place in Benin and Ghana between 2002 and 2006. CoS sought to develop pro-poor pathways of science. Starting initially from the assumption that science impact could be improved by developing farm technologies that are appropriate for the circumstances of resource-poor farmers, the nine researchers soon ran into the very limited windows of opportunity that the farmers face. Improving productivity at the farm level is thwarted by limited access to markets, infrastructure, inputs, credit and services, and by cheap imports. Farmers have no political clout, and agriculture is a source of rent for a host of actors including local and national governments. In these conditions, poverty reduction requires institutional change rather than participatory technology development. All nine researchers tried in their own way to deal with the institutional dimension. This special issue reports on these attempts. The introductory article provides background and context for understanding the institutional issues involved. © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Diagnosing the scope for innovation: Linking smallholder practices and institutional context: Introduction to the special issue(NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2012-12) Röling, N.; Hounkonnou, D.; Kossou, D.; Kuyper, T.W.; Nederlof, S.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Traoré, M.; Van Huis, A.The article introduces the diagnostic studies reported in this special issue and prepares the reader for understanding their full portent, not only as stand-alone articles but also as an expression of a research programme with a common purpose and scientific objective. As such, the article introduces the focus of the CoS-SIS programme on the nexus between farmer practices and institutional context, and primes the reader on the special challenges posed by diagnosis of this nexus. The diagnostic studies scoped the landscape and the regime but mainly as these might impact the niche. What is reported is 'the view from the niche'. The article explains the structure of the research programme and the role of the PhD researchers in it. It further describes a number of methodological issues common to all. © 2012 Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences.Item Five Years After; the Impact of a Participatory Technology Development Programme as Perceived by Smallholder Farmers in Benin and Ghana(Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, 2013-08) Sterk, B.; Kobina, A.C.; Gogan, A.C.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Kossou, D.Purpose: The article reports effects on livelihoods of a participatory technology development effort in Benin and Ghana (2001-2006), five years after it ended.Design: The study uses data from all smallholders who participated in seven experimental groups, each facilitated by a PhD researcher. Baseline data and controls were not available. In their dissertations the researchers had each made claims about the impact of their work on the livelihoods of those involved. These claims guided the study in each group, and referred to both impacts based on the superiority of the technology developed, and increased knowledge or capacity that participants claimed to have gained. Two local social scientists interviewed 187 farmers.Findings: The study found considerable evidence of continued beneficial use of technologies developed with farmers. The most important reason for no longer using a technology or institutional innovation was that smallholders had not been able to sustain the conditions for use. Lasting non-technological effects included more mutual understanding among community members, emancipation vis-à-vis researchers and colleagues, and an experimental attitude and research skills. Such effects were recorded for nearly all groups.Practical implications: Smallholders face small windows of opportunity. Technologies and institutional changes that depend on artificially created conditions are likely to be discontinued once those conditions are withdrawn (for example, access to Neem seeds or agreements about land use between landlords and tenants). The findings draw attention to the conditions that enable smallholders to innovate.Originality/value: The study represents a rare attempt to study impact five years later and compares seven independent cases. © 2013 Wageningen University.Item An innovation systems approach to institutional change: Smallholder development in West Africa(Agricultural Systems, 2012-04) Hounkonnou, D.; Kossou, D.; Kuyper, T.W.; Leeuwis, C.; Nederlof, E.S.; Röling, N.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Traoré, M.; van Huis, A.Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed. The article revisits this issue from a number of angles: current approaches to enlisting SSA smallholders in agricultural development; the history of the phenomenal productivity growth in the USA, The Netherlands and Green Revolution Asia; and the current framework conditions for SSA productivity growth. This analysis shows that (1) the development of an enabling institutional context was a necessary condition that preceded the phenomenal productivity growth in industrial and Green Revolution countries; and that (2) such a context is also present for successful SSA export crop production, but that (3) the context is pervasively biased against SSA's smallholder food production. The article traces the origins of technology supply push (TSP) as a dominant paradigm that hinders recognition of the role of enabling institutions. The article then reviews the literature on institutional change and zooms in on Innovation Platforms (IPs) as a promising innovation system approach to such change. We describe the concrete experience with IP in the Sub-Sahara Challenge Program (SSA-CP) and in the Convergence of Sciences: Strengthening Innovation Systems (CoS-SIS) Program. The former has demonstrated proof of concept. The latter is designed to trace causal mechanisms. We describe its institutional experimentation and research methodology, including causal process tracing. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.Item Tenure security and soil fertility management: Case studies in Ghana and Benin [Sécurité foncière et gestion de la fertilité des sols: Études de cas au Ghana et au Bénin](Cahiers Agricultures, 2006-01) Saïdou, A.; Adjei-Nsiah, S.; Kossou, D.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Kuyper, T.W.Within the framework of a larger research programme, Convergence of Sciences (CoS), studies were conducted on soil fertility management strategies in Ghana (Wenchi area) and Benin (Save area). Soil fertility management in both areas includes short-term and longer-term practices. Both regions are characterised by the presence of natives and various groups of migrants that differ in their livelihood strategies. Natives and migrants enter into various tenure relationships. Driven by the increasing monetisation of the economy, such arrangements have evolved from land-for-labour relationships to a more monetary system,. In general natives claim that migrants are negatively affecting soil fertility through their cropping practices, while migrants claim that the nature of the tenure arrangement leads to insecurity and leaves them no choice but to mine the soil. There is, hence, widespread mistrust between natives and migrants, and the prospects for durable tenure arrangements that could maintain soil fertility seem limited. However, recognition of mutual interdependence could form a basis for the build-up of trust. In this study we highlight similarities and differences between the two areas in terms of livelihood strategies of migrants, soil fertility management practices and tenure arrangements. We also indicate the way in which alternative soil fertility management strategies could be effected under different tenure arrangements and describe the negotiation processes that have been started with a view to implementing such alternatives.Item Triggering regime change: A comparative analysis of the performance of innovation platforms that attempted to change the institutional context for nine agricultural domains in West Africa(Agricultural Systems, 2018-09) Hounkonnou, D.; Brouwers, J.; van Huis, A.; Jiggins, J.; Kossou, D.; Röling, N.; Sakyi-Dawson, O.; Traoré, M.The article synthesises the experiences of innovation platforms (IPs) that engaged in open-ended experimental action to improve the institutional context for smallholder farm development in West Africa. The IPs sought change at the level of the institutional regime covering an entire agricultural domain (such as cocoa, cotton, oil palm or water management). Their purpose was therefore not to ‘roll out’ farm-level technologies across rural communities. The IPs's outcomes were documented and analysed throughout by means of theory-based process tracing in each of seven of the nine domains in which regime change was attempted. The evidence shows that by means of exploratory scoping and diagnosis, socio-technical and institutional experimentation, and guided facilitation IPs can remove, by-pass, or modify domain-specific institutional constraints and/or create new institutional conditions that allow smallholders to capture opportunity. The article describes the 5-year, €4.5 million research programme in Benin, Ghana and Mali, covering theory, design, methods and results. It is the sequel to Hounkonnou et al. in AGSY 108 (2012): 74–83.