Suchergebnisse

Open Access Journal ; The African "youth" population is growing at a fast and steady pace, attracting attention from scholars, policymakers, and politicians. Yet, we know relatively little about this large and heterogeneous segment of the population. This paper presents data from 110 interviews and ten focus groups with youth engaged in commercial agriculture across all four regions of Uganda. Capitalising on this ethnographic data, we provide an analytical framework for studying complexity among the heterogeneous social category of youth agripreneurs. The aim of the paper is twofold: First, to reconcile anthropological studies that highlight the heterogeneity of African youth with demographic understandings of youth as a statistical category defined by an age bracket. Second, to advance an operational definition of youth that allows for more context-sensitive and tailored programmes. Our results suggest that while "youth" is an important category demographically, the opportunities and challenges faced by youths are often not related to age.

The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which systems approaches to innovation are reflected in the crop protection literature and how such approaches are used. A systematic literature review is conducted to study the relation between crop protection and systems approaches to innovation in 107 publications. The analysis of the crop protection literature demonstrates that only a small fraction is systems-oriented as compared to the bulk of publications with a technology-oriented approach. The analysis of agricultural innovations systems literature shows that, although crop protection is addressed, the potential of this systems approach remains largely unexplored for crop protection innovation. A large share of the publications included in this review focus on cropping or farming 'systems' while 'innovation' often equals the development, transfer, adoption and diffusion of crop protection technologies at farm level. There is relatively little attention for the institutional and political dimensions of crop protection and the interactions between farm, regional and national levels in crop protection systems. The traditional division of roles and responsibilities of researchers as innovators, extension personnel as disseminators, and farmers as end-users, is challenged only to a limited extent. The majority of publications discusses ways to optimise existing features of crop protection systems, without exploring more structural transformations that may be required to enhance the resilience of crop protection systems.

Open Access Article; Published online: 22 Nov 2019 ; Livestock play multiple roles for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Mixed crop-livestock systems are common in South Kivu, eastern DR Congo, but herd sizes are small and numbers of large livestock (i.e. cattle) have declined, due to high population density, recent conflicts and extreme poverty. Over half of the farmers keep cavies, a type of micro-livestock fitting the circumstances of smallholders and a valuable asset especially for the poorest households. To characterize cavy husbandry practices, detailed monthly on-farm data on cavy numbers, weights, herd dynamics and feeding practices were collected over 15 months and from households in two contrasting sites in South Kivu. Cavy herds contained on average 10 animals and strongly varied in size over time and between households. The main reasons for keeping cavies were meat consumption, especially for children, and the opportunity to generate petty cash. A large difference was observed in adult cavy live weights between the sites (an average of 0.6 and 1.0 kg per animal in Kabamba and Lurhala, respectively) and attributed to differences in cavy husbandry and genetics. In both sites, quantities of fresh fodder on offer were larger than fodder demand by 50–100%, but no correlation was found between amount of fodder on offer and cavy weight. Farmers faced several constraints to cavy production, including substantial declines in cavy herd size due to predation or theft and a lack of knowledge regarding breeding and feeding. Hence, the introduction of cages to limit mortality and fodder cultivation to improve feed quality were opportunities for improving cavy production. Overall, micro-livestock present a promising entry-point for development initiatives, also outside DR Congo, because of their potential to decrease poverty and improve human nutrition. ; Directorate-General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Belgium ; Peer Review

This study identifies entry points for innovation for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems. An agricultural innovation systems approach is used to provide a holistic image of (relations between) constraints faced by different stakeholder groups, the dimensions and causes of these constraints, and intervention levels, timeframes and types of innovations needed. Our data shows that constraints for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems are mainly of economic and institutional nature. Constraints are caused by the absence, or poor functioning of institutions such as policies and markets, limited capabilities and financial resources, and ineffective interaction and collaboration between stakeholders. Addressing these constraints would mainly require short- and middle-term productivity and institutional innovations, combined with middle- to long-term NRM innovations across farm and national levels. Institutional innovation (e.g. better access to credit, services, inputs and markets) is required to address 69% of the constraints for sustainable intensification in the Central Africa Highlands. This needs to go hand in hand with productivity innovation (e.g. improved knowhow of agricultural production techniques, and effective use of inputs) and NRM innovation (e.g. targeted nutrient applications, climate smart agriculture). Constraint network analysis shows that institutional innovation to address government constraints at national level related to poor interaction and collaboration will have a positive impact on constraints faced by other stakeholder groups. We conclude that much of the R4D investments and innovation in the Central Africa Highlands remain targeting household productivity at farm level. Reasons for that include (1) a narrow focus on sustainable intensification, (2) institutional mandates and pre-analytical choices based project objectives and disciplinary bias, (3) short project cycles that impede work on middle- and long-term NRM and institutional innovation, (4) the likelihood that institutional experimentation can become political, and (5) complexity in terms of expanded systems boundaries and measuring impact. ; Peer Review