Monitoring & evaluation for learning in rural innovation systems

"M&E for innovating agricultural services"

   
Rural development contributes to the eradication of poverty, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals. A combination of technological, social and institutional developments is needed for rural development to be sustainable. This requires the input of agricultural research, extension and education systems (AKIS, the Agricultural Knowledge and Information System), but also of other market and chain actors.  Key methods for ensuring that AKIS provides farmers with the messages and services they really need include:

• a stronger interaction between public and private knowledge-based service providers and other actors such as farmer organizations
• the empowerment of farmers and other entrepreneurs in the innovation system.

Among other things, KIT assists in the adaptation and application of new approaches for monitoring and evaluating the performance of agricultural innovation systems and service provision. The terms monitoring and evaluation (M&E) here are used in the broadest sense of developmental evaluation and reflexive monitoring (see the In-Depth Section), i.e. M&E for learning (M&E4L). One of the earliest examples of this method for ensuring agricultural development is sustainable was the use of the M&E4L methodology RAAKS (see In-Depth section of this dossier or the special dossier on RAAKS) for developing the widely adopted Client Oriented Research Management Approach (CORMA), which was pioneered together with partner organizations in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Benin.

In 2009, Willem Heemskerk and a number of other KIT advisors co-authored or contributed to the FARA whitepaper Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D), which is based on a number of principles aimed at the integration of: (1)  the perspectives, knowledge and actions of different stakeholders; (2) the learning that stakeholders achieve through working together; (3) analysis, action and change across the different dimensions of development; and (4) analysis, action and change at different levels of spatial and social organization. RAAKS is one of the methods for iterative, social learning that emerged in the 1990s. It was applied in case studies 5 (“Enhancing interaction in Kenya’s floriculture industry”), 11 (“CORDEMA in Tanzania”), and possibly other case studies as well. Interestingly, the IAR4D approach has also been applied in the West, as can be seen in case study 12 on water management in the Netherlands.

Other examples are listed in the projects section of this page below. They have been documented in the publications, see also below. An interesting new development is the CoS-SIS programme in West Africa, in which KIT is one of the partners. Its full name is "Convergence of Sciences: Strengthening agricultural innovation systems in Benin, Ghana and Mali". During the second phase (2008-2013), action-research will be carried out to elaborate, apply and assess an innovation system approach to sustainable rural poverty alleviation and food security. A major challenge is to develop a methodological and theoretical approach to combine technological understanding with the creation of institutional space for change. One of the assumptions is that it is possible to identify and facilitate champions of smallholder development among the key actors to form Concertation and Innovation Groups (CIGs, still called Communities of Practice in the CoS-SIS proposal). In CoS-SIS, M&E for learning is intricately linked to agricultural innovation coaching (AI-Coaching, see also the dossier with the same name): the AI Coach is expected to mentor and empower weaker partners in the innovation system programme. The AI Coach will do so using the monitoring & evaluation for learning methodologies outlined in the In-Depth section of this dossier.