Browsing by Author "van Huis, A."
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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 Opportunities for oil palm development in Benin and Ghana: Institutional conditions for technological change(2010) Vissoh, P.V.; Adjei-Nsiah, S.; van Huis, A.; Roling, N.The paper reports on 9 months of exploratory research of the oil palm domain in Benin and Ghana, with a view to identifying opportunities for development. Both countries are in the zone from which the palm, that now gives the world a third of its vegetable oil, originates. Though palm oil and wine production expanded with very rapid population growth, both countries now depend for a considerable proportion of their palm oil requirements on imports especially from S-E Asia. An analysis of opportunities shows that, for oil palm to become ‘an engine for growth’, both technological and institutional issues must be addressed. The paper outlines these issues and concludes that institutional change is a necessary pre-requisite for both countries to benefit from the potential of this ‘miracle’ tree. In addition, variability in weather conditions due to climate change could affect production, which is very sensitive to drought conditions for setting of female flowers.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.