This Resource Finder is designed to help identify appropriate resources to use during the process of developing capacity for agricultural innovation. Please click on any one of the domains in the schematic below to view relevant resources. For a more targeted search, please use the search box below.
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This reference document describes a comprehensive approach for planning, monitoring and evaluation of capacity and the results of capacity development processes. This capacity framework used centres around 5 capabilities (‘5Cs’) that together contribute to an organisation’s ability to create social value. The document has been written for development practitioners in Southern organisations and planning, monitoring and evaluation professionals with whom they collaborate. As the title implies, it is not itself a handbook or a ‘tool’. Rather, the text is intended to explain a 5Cs perspective that can be practically translated and applied in context and organisation-specific ways.It contains practical suggestions and concrete experience to help the reader in adapting the 5Cs to a most appropriate use in their own context and for their own purposes.
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Although business models that deliver sustainability are increasingly popular in the literature, few tools that assist in sustainable business modelling have been identified. This paper investigates how businesses might create balanced social, environmental and economic value through integrating sustainability more fully into the core of their business. A value mapping tool is developed to help firms create value propositions better suited for sustainability. This tool intends to support business modelling for sustainability by assisting firms in better understanding their overall value proposition, both positive and negative, for all relevant stakeholders in the value network
Business and enterprise
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This is a review on the impact of capacity strengthening of agricultural research systems for development was commissioned by DFID and was linked to a process of documenting outcomes from the project Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA). SCARDA provided support to twelve research and education institutes in ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa to assist them to enhance their performance in carrying out demand-led and high-quality agricultural research.
Research and education
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CARE’s Adaptation Learning Program for Africa (ALP) recently launched the ‘Adaptation Good Practice (AGP) Checklist’ to provide guidance on actions and criteria which help to ensure that adaptation results in quality, impactful, and long-term climate resilience for the most vulnerable people. The checklist supports design, decisions, capacity building, implementation, and monitoring of adaptation, in relation to the roll out of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and adaptation finance. It can be used to inform or screen concepts, proposals, implementation plans and national budgets for their incorporation of and compliance with adaptation good practices, and to determine the focus of research and capacity building.
Enabling environment
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The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) has useful infographics on indicators on capacity development across Africa from 2011 to 2015. The indicators are based on the a number of measures, including: strategic choices for capacity development; policy environment for capacity development; strategic policy choices for improving the capacity of statistical system; financial commitment for capacity development; development cooperation effectiveness; gender equality social inclusion; partnering for capacity development; capacity profiling; and capacity needs assessment.
General
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This book attempts to address these questions and challenges, by examining how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, through agribusiness, public policies and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system (AIS) involving many actors and interactions. The country reports are based on qualitative interviews with agribusiness representatives about their experiences in this area. The synthesis chapter preceding the country reports presents the main findings of the country reports, links common themes, and distills lessons learned.
Business and enterprise
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This sourcebook draws on the emerging principles of Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) analysis and action to help to identify, design, and implement the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions that appear most likely to strengthen innovation systems and promote agricultural innovation and equitable growth. Although the sourcebook discusses why investments in AISs are becoming so important, it gives most of its attention to how specific approaches and practices can foster innovation in a range of contexts. The sourcebook is targeted to the key operational staff in international and regional development agencies and national governments who design and implement lending projects and to the practitioners who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages. The sourcebook is also an important resource for the research community and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and may be a useful reference for the private sector, farmer organizations, and individuals with an interest in agricultural innovation. It concludes with details on the sourcebook's structure, a summary of the themes covered in each module, and a discussion of the cross-cutting themes treated throughout the sourcebook
Networks and systems
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ASTI collects and publishes data fusing on institutional developments, investments, and capacity in agricultural R&D at national, regional, and global levels for low- and middle-income countries. Further, it produces reports and publication describing trends in human and financial capacity in agricultural R&D at different levels.
Research and education
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The five steps of the UNDP capacity development process are: (1) 1. Engage stakeholders on capacity development; (2) Assess capacity assets and needs; (3) Formulate a capacity development response; (4) Implement a capacity development response; and (5) Evaluate capacity development.
General
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This book contains a collection of papers that discuss the experience of an Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) capacity building program in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The program was the AusAID-funded Agricultural Research and Development Support Facility (ARDSF), which ran for five years from 2007 to 2012, and which sought to improve the delivery of services by agricultural research organisations to smallholder farmers. AR4D is an emerging mode of agricultural research practice in the international development community. Definitions of this practice are rather fluid, but its key intent is to directly link investments in research with tangible development outcomes. The way to actually do this is still a work in progress — a gap that this book seeks to fill. However, it seems quite clear that AR4D’s use of systems perspectives on learning, innovation and change have fundamental implications for the way agricultural research is conducted and the way capacity is built.
Research and education
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This report presents the findings and recommendations of a capacity needs assessment study carried out between July and September 2012 in the context of the ATA. In this paper, we document an approach to capacity strengthening in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to implement the ATA. The objectives of this report include mapping key institutions and stakeholders, analyzing institutional capacity strengths and gaps, and making recommendations to improve these capacities in relation to their proposed implementation roles.
Enabling environment
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Lessons and recommendations for building capacity among multi-stakeholder actors in agricultural research for development
Research and education
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Value network mapping is a tool to collectively understand the capacities of, resources exchanged between, and relationships among multiple actors in a system around a specific issue (e.g., food insecurity, missing markets, etc.). This tool supports collective strategizing on how to increase the capacity to collaborate, the capacity to navigate complexity and the capacity to engage in strategic and political processes. It also identifies resources needed to build these capacities. Value network mapping is very flexible. Option A) It can be done in a participatory setting with 4-5 people with different perspectives on the issue at hand around different tables; in a room with up to 100 participants. Option B) It can be also done through semi-structured interviews and then transformed in a map ex post, yet, this option B is less participatory. On the other hand, this option B can be more easily adapted to gauge data from marginalized actors in rural communities that may not be able to speak up in option A. Option A leads to qualitative data only on the actors on the system, their capacities, and associated resources, in relation to a specific issue. Moreover, it generates learning-by-doing in the teams (specifically developing systems-thinking and entrepreneurial competencies among participants), which can potentially be also assessed through a survey (before/after the mapping exercise). Option B leads to quantitative data on value network embeddedness, i.e., the extent to which different actors in the system may be influential or critical complements to building new strategic partnerships that address the systemic problem at hand.
Research and education
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The Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services project (INGENAES) developed Competency Framework for Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services. The framework lays out a comprehensive list of skills, attitudes, and behaviors (SABs) to enable frontline agricultural extension workers to engage in relevant, gender-responsive, nutrition-focused programming as part of their routine extension activities. This framework intends to help leaders of agencies providing extension services to examine their organizational mission (and the results implied by it) and develop strategies of extension services which help them to accomplish their mission, and confront key operational challenges faced in providing quality services. The framework can be accessed here.
Bridging institutions
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FAO recently launched a guide for programme planners called ‘Designing nutrition-sensitive agriculture investments: Checklist and guidance for programme formulation’. It is a manual based on a thorough review of FAO’s experience on nutrition-sensitive agriculture and was developed through extensive consultation with its development partners. The manual has been field tested and is structured around the first phase of the programming cycle.
Enabling environment
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This essay discusses 1) the current agri-food firms’ need of interacting with multiple stakeholders to undertake sustainable strategies effectively, 2) the relationship between human capital and firm capabilities to effectively interact with multiple stakeholders and 3) a list of competencies characterizing the human capital that would meet the need of agri-food firms and which can be learned – at least to some extent – through higher education and on-the-job training
Business and enterprise
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Enabling the Business of Agriculture examines and monitors regulations that impact how markets function in the agriculture and agribusiness sectors. The ultimate aim is to promote smart regulations that ensure safety and quality control as well as efficient regulatory processes that support thriving agribusinesses.
Business and enterprise
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FAO’s Capacity Development Unit, has prepared useful resources and case studies on good capacity development practices for people who design and implement programmes at the country level. They are selected simplified tools drawn from the full set of topics and tools contained in the FAO Learning Modules.
General
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Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a facilitator’s guide book for farmers’ field schools. This publication offers facilitators technical guidance to manage field farm schools and support local famers in all aspects of rice crop management.
Bridging institutions
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The Feed the Future Learning Agenda, launched in 2011, contributes to the body of knowledge on food security that serves to improve the design and management of interventions in the agriculture and nutrition sectors. It lays out how the initiative will learn from its programs, systematically assess critical gaps in evidence, and measure the success of its activities in partner countries, particularly through impact evaluations. Measuring impact requires a long-term effort, so in the interim this report examines what existing evaluations can tell us about these questions now. This synthesis identifies and chronicles evidence from 11 impact evaluations and 185 performance evaluations conducted between 2010 and 2015 across 64 countries. Reviewers used a qualitative analysis coding methodology to overcome the fact that most evaluations were not designed specifically to answer Learning Agenda questions.
General
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