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Title
Cultivating innovation: An assessment of the value of the Agricultural Innovation Systems approach in analysing problems in the agricultural sector in a developing country - A case-study of the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau |
Full text
http://dspace.library.uu.nl:8080/handle/1874/276845 |
Date
2013 |
Author(s)
Zom, L.M. |
Contributor(s)
Westen, A.C.M. van |
Abstract
Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest countries in the world. Rice is a vital component of food security in the country. However, the production of rice has been stagnating, while the demand for rice has been increasing. Currently, rice is the main import product. One way to understand and tackle the stagnating production is to focus on innovation. When considering innovation, the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) approach can be used to analyse the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau. But, until now, work on innovation in developing country agriculture has been focused on promoting innovation. It is unclear whether this approach is useful when the focus is on understanding the problems experienced in the field. Also, innovation has traditionally only been thought of in the context of developed countries. The assumptions made included the availability of the necessary competence, critical actors and other resources in abundance. Of course, these assumptions are mostly not true in developing countries. The remnants of these assumptions are still visible in the more recent publications made on agriculture in developing countries. Although in these publications the availability of these resources is not assumed, the need for them is. These two issues show that, in order to understand to what extent the AIS approach can give a proper analysis of the problems experienced in the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau, the overlap between the results from a direct analysis of the main problems and the results using the AIS approach needs to be investigated. The question posed is: To what extent can the Agricultural Innovation Systems approach give a proper analysis of the problems experienced in the field in the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau? The methodology used includes semi-structured interviews with key-informants, structured interviews with different actors throughout the rice sector and focus groups with farmers and traders of local rice. A total of 35 unique problems were identified, of which only 4 were identified by both approaches. An analysis of the influence of these problems on each other and on innovation revealed that the problems identified with the different approaches are not only linked, in many cases one may explain or provide insights in the underlying issues of the other. In short, one without the other will result in an incomplete analysis of the problems in the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau. So, this case-study has shown that the AIS approach does not give a complete analysis of the problems experienced in the field in the rice sector in Guinea-Bissau. It does, however, give insights that are not obtained when only the problems as experienced in the field are assessed. |
Subject(s)
Geowetenschappen; Agricultural Innovation Systems approach; AIS; innovation; network; developing country; agriculture; rice; Guinea-Bissau; sub-Saharan Africa; West-Africa |
Language
en |
Type of publication
Master thesis |
Format
image/pdf |
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/ClosedAccess |
Repository
Utrecht - University of Utrecht
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Added to C-A: 2014-04-23;09:41:28 |
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