Innovation Africa : enriching farmers' livelihoods / edited by Pascal C. Sanginga [and others].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Innovation concepts and methods -- Strengthening social capital in agricultural innovation systems -- Policy, institutional and market-led innovations -- Local innovation processes -- Building capacity for joint innovation.

Innovation Africa is a collection of 25 papers presented during the Innovation Africa Symposium (IAS) in Uganda in 2006. The authors recommend an "innovation systems" approach to reducing poverty, which they define, in rather longwinded fashion, as "systematically incorporating functional linkages between stakeholders and organisations within the broader institutional policy environment". While some might argue that this is simply longhand for some form of pragmatism, over the course of 25 chapters various authors define what it means with real-life examples. A paper on Malawi and Uganda looks at ways to encourage rural innovation by helping farmers to identify market opportunities so that they can produce what they can market instead of marketing what they produce. Further chapters look at other ways to promote innovation, such as village information and communication centres in Rwanda and farmer field schools in Kenya.