Contributions

Enabling environments and scaling to accelerate impact: To support innovation development and adoption, the CoA analyzes the policy and institutional environment at implementation sites and identifies appropriate interventions. Achieving impact at scale requires research (science of scaling) and the innovations need to be tested across a range of contexts in order to generate evidence of potential impacts at scale. Research questions include:

What are the enabling conditions underlying effective uptake and wider spread of innovations and new technologies and how can these be promoted to support scaling-up efforts?

What are the policy processes underlying effective uptake of innovations and new technologies and how can these be supported efficiently and effectively?

What characteristics of underperforming agri-food systems are enabling or constraining market, policy, institutional and technological options and how do these relate to livelihoods and sustainability in different contexts?

What are the economic, social, and environmental impacts of GLDC technologies?

FP1 will work closely with other FPs across the GLDC target areas, but especially with FP2 where action research is to be undertaken in specific value chains in collaboration with NGOs and the private sector.

FP1.3 Impact pathway and Theory of Change

Lack of information about the likely future of agri-food systems under climate change and technological advances in agriculture often hinders visioning, goal-setting and planning of agricultural research and development. Consequently, priority setting in agricultural research is often short-term, incoherent, and influenced by vested interests. The FP1 research agenda, therefore, is built around in-depth scientific ex-ante impact and foresight analysis of food production, demand and prices under alternative technology, socio-economic and climate change scenarios aimed at guiding GLDC research strategy. In order to respond to diverse stakeholder needs, participatory research complements and feeds into foresight modeling. Through this FP, foresight analysis and priority setting will become accessible, quicker and more comprehensive to agri-food system actors. This priority-setting informs the other FPs to develop appropriate and demand-driven innovations. FP1 also consists of ex-post assessment and continuous evaluation, drawing lessons from other flagships’ outcomes. The combination of priority setting and impact evaluation will support agri-food system actors to accelerate the adoption and impacts of GLDC technologies and innovations Figure FP 1.2.

By focusing on emerging trends and markets and considering stakeholder priorities (CoA1.1, CoA1.2), the program aligns with diverse household and market realities, stakeholder objectives (including end-user demands) and targets business opportunities. Focus on gender and youth (CoA1.3) develops mechanisms for inclusive collaborative interventions which are to be translated into practice in the other FPs. In parallel, understanding of household decision-making processes promotes development of inclusive technologies and innovations which respond to stakeholder needs and expectations. Further, FP1 identifies key system level-barriers of agri-food system regimes with stakeholders (CoA1.4) to create conducive agricultural policy environments across the countries where the program operates. A key assumption is that if collaboration and participation are promoted early in the process (CoA1.1 and CoA1.4), then this will encourage stakeholder engagement and co-ownership throughout the program. Further, a transparent and consultative process of priority assessment will ensure commitment of the national and regional stakeholders to the program. Finally, adoption and cost-effective scaling options will be studied (CoA1.2 and CoA1.4) and applied in the other FPs. In collaboration with CRP-PIM, these studies will generate lessons on GLDC’s overall impact on smallholder livelihoods in the target as well as spillover countries of SSA and SA.

Through its ex-ante and ex-post assessments, the FP contributes to sub-IDO (i) ‘1.2.2 Reduced market barriers’ through connecting different stakeholders, highlighting market demands and setting the stage for a more conducive enabling environment (ii) ‘1.3.2 Improved livelihood opportunities’ through targeting of household needs and identifying market opportunities and (iii) ‘D1.4 Increased capacity for innovation in partner development organizations and in poor and vulnerable communities’ through comprehensive capacity development at local and organizational level.

The impact pathway rests on four assumptions:

Stakeholders will take up the opportunity of the established priority-setting platform and use it effectively for engagement, information exchange and discussion of results. This process will lead to more inclusive priorities, which will better reflect stakeholder needs and increase their commitments.

The feedback provided by FP1 to FP2-FP5 as well as to the wider stakeholder community is used to develop appropriate and demand-driven breeding priorities, agricultural technologies, marketing arrangements and inclusive approaches. This will in turn improve targeting and increase impacts.

Gender will be understood and successfully prioritized into all FPs such that the resulting interventions are responsive to gender & social inclusion.

The hands-on field level research will attract political will and commitment of policy makers to create an enabling environment and capacity of national and regional partners. Such commitment will lead to increased human and financial resources to evaluate and scale up GLDC-generated technologies and innovations.

To mitigate potential risks underlying these assumptions, management must put into place systematic priority setting, engagement and targeting processes as well as mechanisms to ensure that the other FPs use feedback from FP1 to design and refine research. Besides, GLDC management is to establish an incentive mechanism to promote best practice in gender research across FPs aimed at achieving greater gender equitable research and development outcomes.

Although this FP does not provide direct employment for women and youth, it helps to create the enabling institutional and policy environments for scaling inclusive business models (FP2). As researchers feed scientific evidence from these FPs into policy processes, this FP will use political networks to set conditions for job creation on farms and in value chains. To become convincing, the evidence must address the current lack of interest of youth in agriculture. Doing so will only work in partnerships with youth organizations linking rural and urban areas, such as Young Professionals in Agriculture and Rural Development (YPARD), which the program actively pursues.



Figure FP1.2: FP1 Impact Pathway

FP1.4 Science quality

Pre-proposal foresight and ex-ante analysis for targeting and prioritization will be extended during the first year of GLDC. This will be complemented by ex-ante yield impact analysis of promising and alternative GLDC technologies building on the methods and experiences of the Global Futures and Strategic Foresight (GFSF) in CRP-PIM. The tools developed under the GFSF project were successfully used by the CoA1.1 team to quantify impact of promising groundnut, chickpea, pearl millet and sorghum technologies on yields under different climate change models¹⁰⁵ and assess the effects of weather extremes on regional food security¹⁰⁶.

The potential synergies and conflicts between the objectives of profitability and resilience as simultaneous targets have been demonstrated¹⁰⁷ and provide a basis to further analyze the timing of synergistic innovations and the channels which could facilitate approaches based on the simultaneous consideration of market demands and farmer preferences. Several scientists in FP1 participated in the SPIA-led project, Diffusion and Impact of Improved Varieties in Africa (DIIVA)¹⁰⁸ and contributed to the widely recognized publications¹⁰⁹ on the effectiveness of crop improvement, adoption and impacts of improved varieties in food crops in sub-Saharan Africa. FP1 scientists have the experience, partnerships and networks, through the projects they are engaged in or leading, to enrich GLDC in its delivery of quality science.