CGIAR Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis : internally commissioned external review

The review was carried out during the PRGA III International Seminar and Small Grants Workshop, held in Nairobi from 6 to 11 November, 2000. The Review was based on published materials made available during the week, presentations by and interviews with the PRGA staff and informal interviews with different Program stakeholders. In addition, a simple questionnaire was used with liaison scientists to gain a better, semiquantified, insight into the state of participatory research and gender analysis in the different CGIAR Centers. The Review Report has been organized in two parts. The first part consists of a review of the achievements of the Program, based primarily on comparing current achievements (after three years of the Program) against the Indicators and Milestones associated with the Goal, Purpose and Outputs of the five-year Program. The main part of the Report consists of suggestions and recommendations for changes in different parts of the Program, which may help to achieve even greater success than has been already achieved in the past three years

Learning Networks Matter: Challenges to Developing Learning-Based Competence in Mango Production and Post-Harvest in Andhra Pradesh, India

This discussion paper explores aspects of innovation systems ideas in the analysis of mango production and export by smallscale farmers in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The paper shows how despite favourable agro-ecological conditions and being the largest international mango producer, India still struggles to build momentum in rapidly emerging export markets. An analysis of the sector's recent history combined with an empirical account of inter-sectoral and intra-sectoral linkage patterns among stakeholder groups appears to provide the basis for remedial policy suggestions. Most of these relate to aspects of integrated technology development and innovation management.innovation, innovation systems, mango, high-value, national competence, learning networks, South Asia, India

Expanding the reach and benefits of digital agriculture

The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society initiative was established in 2002 to support projects aimed at leveraging ICTs to enhance farmer knowledge and productivity. But did the programme help to close the gender and urban-rural gap in ICT access? Or is there a need for the scheme to be rolled out again

Agriculture numérique, des leviers pour réduire les inégalités

Le programme Genre, agriculture et développement rural dans la société de l'information (GenARDIS) a été lancé en 2002 dans le but de soutenir des projets utilisant les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) pour renforcer les connaissances et la productivité des agriculteurs. Quel est le bilan du programme ? A-t-il permis de réduire les inégalités de genre, mais aussi entre ruralité et urbanité ? Est-il pertinent de redéployer cette initiative aujourd'hui

Evaluating the impact of the graduate fellowship programme of the International Livestock Research Institute. A tools and process report

Post graduate research projects are an effective method for building new research capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) offers a graduate fellowship programme for scientists from developing and developed countries. This is done in partnership with universities in African and Asian countries, Europe, Australia and North America. To date such programmes have not been adequately assessed to find the impact on national research capacity, the graduate fellows and the partner institutions. To assess the value of this training, ILRI conducted an impact study of its graduate fellows in Kenya and Ethiopia between 1978 and 1997. This report presents the tools and methods used in this study. Others may use these freely, but appropriate acknowledgement of the source will be appreciated. Future users may modify these instruments for their own impact studies; and indeed are encouraged to do so. We recognise that many improvements could be made and request feedback from others on how they have accomplished this. This report also presents part of the results to enable those interested in future impact studies in Ethiopia or Kenya to use the data as a benchmark

Gender and agriculture in the information society

Excitement about new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is tempered by long-standing problems of gender inequality in development processes. In most developing countries, women make up the majority of the population working in agriculture, but they are marginalized with respect to access to ICTs for economic and social empowerment. Moreover, two-thirds of the world’s 876 million illiterates are women, most of whom live in rural areas of developing countries

What is Effective Research Communication? Towards Cooperative Inquiry with Nunavut Communities

Communication is recognized as the foundation of developing partnerships in science. In this study, we assess the effectiveness of several communication processes, practices, and tools used by wildlife researchers in northern communities in Arctic Canada. A case study was conducted in the communities of Cape Dorset and Coral Harbour (Salliq), Nunavut, Canada, to assess the effectiveness of research communication approaches carried out by the northern marine bird research group of Environment and Climate Change Canada, which has a long-standing research relationship with these two communities. Our objectives were to 1) explore local experiences with research—marine bird research in particular, 2) examine what communication approaches and tools Nunavummiut viewed as most effective for learning about research activities and feeling engaged in the process, and 3) identify new and emerging communication needs in Nunavut communities to support more effective research partnerships. Our findings indicate that several communication methods used by wildlife researchers, such as community meetings, have become less effective because of changing information-sharing practices at the community level. Other communication practices, such as using social media, hold much promise, but as of yet are underutilized by researchers, though of interest to northern communities. Acknowledging that every northern community is unique, with context-specific priorities, capacities, and needs, effective research partnerships should be built upon communication approaches that foster cooperative inquiry and learning. In progress towards this goal, we explore two emerging and related themes: first, access to information and communication technologies in the two communities, and second, the engagement of youth in Arctic research communication and delivery.La communication est reconnue comme le fondement de la formation de partenariats en science. Dans le cadre de cette étude, nous évaluons l’efficacité de plusieurs processus, méthodes et outils de communication employés par les chercheurs de la faune dans des collectivités nordiques de l’Arctique canadien. Une étude de cas a été réalisée dans les collectivités de Cape Dorset et de Coral Harbour (Salliq), au Nunavut, Canada, afin d’évaluer l’efficacité des approches de communication en matière de recherches mises en œuvre par le groupe de recherche des oiseaux aquatiques du Nord relevant d’Environnement et Changement climatique Canada, qui effectue des recherches depuis plusieurs années dans ces deux collectivités. Nos objectifs étaient les suivants : 1) explorer les expériences locales en matière de recherche, plus particulièrement en ce qui a trait aux recherches sur les oiseaux aquatiques; 2) examiner quelles approches de communication et quels outils les Nunavummiuts considèrent comme les plus efficaces pour se familiariser avec les activités de recherche et pour se sentir engagés dans le processus; et 3) déterminer les besoins en communication nouveaux et émergents des collectivités du Nunavut afin de donner lieu à des partenariats de recherche plus efficaces. Selon nos constatations, plusieurs méthodes de communication employées par les chercheurs de la faune, comme les rencontres communautaires, ont perdu de leur efficacité en raison de l’évolution des pratiques de partage de l’information à l’échelle communautaire. D’autres méthodes de communication, comme les médias sociaux, s’avèrent prometteuses, mais les chercheurs ne s’en servent pas encore beaucoup même si elles revêtent de l’intérêt au sein des collectivités du Nord. Reconnaissant le caractère unique des collectivités nordiques, qui ont des priorités, des capacités et des besoins propres à leur contexte, la réalisation de partenariats de recherche efficaces doit se fonder sur des approches de communication favorisant l’apprentissage en collaboration. Dans l’optique de cet objectif, nous explorons deux thèmes émergents et connexes : premièrement, l’accès aux technologies de l’information et de la communication des deux collectivités, et deuxièmement, l’engagement des jeunes en matière de communication et de réalisation des recherches dans l’Arctique

Responsible agricultural mechanization innovation for the sustainable development of Nepal’s hillside farming system

Agricultural mechanization in developing countries has taken at least two contested innovation pathways—the “incumbent trajectory” that promotes industrial agriculture, and an “alternative pathway” that supports small-scale mechanization for sustainable development of hillside farming systems. Although both pathways can potentially reduce human and animal drudgery, the body of literature that assesses the sustainability impacts of these mechanization pathways in the local ecological, socio-economic, cultural, and historical contexts of hillside farms is either nonexistent or under-theorized. This paper addresses this missing literature by examining the case of Nepal’s first Agricultural Mechanization Promotion Policy 2014 (AMPP) using a conceptual framework of what will be defined as “responsible innovation”. The historical context of this assessment involves the incumbent trajectory of mechanization in the country since the late 1960s that neglected smallholder farms located in the hills and mountains and biased mechanization policy for flat areas only. Findings from this study suggest that the AMPP addressed issues for smallholder production, including gender inequality, exclusion of smallholder farmers, and biophysical challenges associated with hillside farming systems, but it remains unclear whether and how the policy promotes small-scale agricultural mechanization for sustainable development of agriculture in the hills and mountains of Nepal

What determines women's participation in collective action? Evidence from a western Ugandan coffee cooperative

Women smallholders face greater constraints than men in accessing capital and commodity markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Collective action has been promoted to remedy those disadvantages. Using survey data of 421 women members and 210 nonmembers of a coffee producer cooperative in Western Uganda, this study investigates the determinants of women's participation in cooperatives and women's intensity of participation. The results highlight the importance of access to and control over land for women to join the cooperative in the first place. Participation intensity is measured through women's participation in collective coffee marketing and share capital contributions. It is found that duration of membership, access to extension services, more equal intrahousehold power relations, and joint land ownership positively influence women's ability to commit to collective action. These findings demonstrate the embeddedness of collective action in gender relations and the positive value of women's active participation for agricultural-marketing cooperatives

Enabling “next generation glocal communicators”

Vast changes are occurring around the world in the ways in which people living in rural and remote areas are communicating within their communities and beyond them. In part, this is driven by emerging information and communication technologies which are often referred to as “nextgen” (next generation implying a transition from Web 1.0 to 5.0, and plausibly, beyond) because the Internet is increasingly weaving human lives with digital devices, applications, data and blended forms of intelligence that involve different levels of human and machine interaction. This ‘internet of things’ is more than a catch-phrase; it is the deepening connection of human beings, networks and machines creating more complex forms of activism across a range of issues from economic austerity to climate change (Juris, 2008, 2012). The problem is that the Internet is largely urbancentric and structured in such a way that it is biased against less populated areas. This situation led to a dualism referred to as a ‘digital divide’ or who had access to the Internet and who did not. Yet, for rural and remote communities, it is not so much a case of having access to the Internet, or not, but rather, what is being done with that access and why that matters to the lives of rural people and the changing relationship between human beings and the natural environment