NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Innovation intermediation in a digital age: Comparing public and private new-ICT platforms for agricultural extension in Ghana
Publication date: Available online 13 June 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life SciencesAuthor(s): Nyamwaya Munthali, Cees Leeuwis, Annemarie van Paassen, Rico Lie, Richard Asare, Ron van Lammeren, Marc SchutAbstractAgricultural extension in sub-Saharan Africa has often been criticised for its focus on linear knowledge transfer, and limited attention to systemic approaches to service delivery. Currently, the region is experiencing a new-ICT revolution and there are high expectations of new-ICTs to enhance interaction and information exchange in extension service delivery. Using an innovation systems perspective, w...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Potatoes and livelihoods in Chencha, southern Ethiopia
Publication date: Available online 18 June 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life SciencesAuthor(s): Yenenesh Tadesse, Conny J.M. Almekinders, Rogier P.O. Schulte, Paul C. StruikAbstractPotato is highly productive crop and can provide a cheap and nutritionally-rich staple food. Its potential as a cash generator and source of food is much under-utilized in many emerging economies. In this paper we study the impact of an intervention that introduced improved potato technologies in Chencha, Ethiopia on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. We collected information through in-depth interviews in order to explore possi...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Applying citizen science for malaria prevention in Rwanda: An integrated conceptual framework
Publication date: Available online 5 July 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life SciencesAuthor(s): Domina Asingizwe, P. Marijn Poortvliet, Constantianus J.M. Koenraadt, Arnold J.H. Van Vliet, Marilyn M. Murindahabi, Chantal Ingabire, Leon Mutesa, Peter H. FeindtAbstractMalaria remains a major threat to public health. Long-Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets (LLINs) and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) have been widely adopted as important malaria prevention and control interventions and have contributed to significant reduction in malaria incidence. However, recently malaria resurgence has been reported in different cou...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 11, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Supporting local institutions for inclusive green growth: Developing an Evidence Gap Map
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Ezra Berkhout, Jetske Bouma, Nikolaos Terzidis, Maarten VoorsAbstractWe conduct a structured search of the academic literature that assesses the impact of development interventions that aim to build and strengthen local-level institutions to facilitate Inclusive Green Growth. Inclusive Green Growth extends the standard growth perspective to include welfare enhancements both the poor (‘inclusive’) and for future (‘green’) generations. We restrict our search to studies in the domain of agriculture and poverty alleviati...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

‘Producing’ institutions of climate change adaptation and food security in north eastern Ethiopia
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Million GebreyesAbstractThe paper presents institutional diagnostics, which is sensitive to dynamic social and political processes ‘producing’ institutions underlying practices in resource management, climate change adaptation, and food security. The paper is based on a qualitative case study on watershed development interventions conducted in two villages in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. The research showed that resource management, adaptation, and food security institutions in Ethiopia are a result of struggles between cont...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

How to diagnose institutional conditions conducive to inter-sectoral food security policies? The example of Burkina Faso
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Arlène Alpha, Eve FouilleuxAbstractThe multidimensional nature of food security often leads experts to recommend mobilising all public intervention sectors to ensure that food security policies are inter-sectoral, and not the sole responsibility of a single sector. However, in African contexts such as in Burkina Faso, food security policies are in most cases far from being inter-sectoral. They are instead focused on agricultural production. It is therefore critical to understand why food security policies are what they are,...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Diagnosing integrated food security strategies
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Jeroen J.L. CandelAbstractThe global food price crises of 2007–8 and 2010 and subsequent policy debates have led to increased recognition that the drivers of food insecurity and associated policies transcend the boundaries of traditional governmental sectors and jurisdictions. Building on this insight, many governments of countries facing food insecurity have developed, or are in the progress of developing, integrated food security strategies. However, in spite of their recent popularity, to date little is known about the ...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Multi-scale governance in agriculture systems: Interplay between national and local institutions around the production dimension of food security in Mali
This study looks at three institutional arrangements in the agriculture and food security sector in the district of Koutiala, Mali to analyse the institutional variety across scale and the underlying institutional logics. On one side, the Cooperative Law as well as the Seed Law both designed at national level to enable famers’ access to agriculture services and improved seeds have yielded mixed results with regard to anticipated outcomes. The cooperative law is believed to degrade the social cohesion and the mutual support on which vulnerable farmers rely when facing climatic and non-climatic risks whereas the new seed s...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

A diagnostic framework for food system governance arrangements: The case of South Africa
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Catrien J.A.M. Termeer, Scott Drimie, John Ingram, Laura Pereira, Mark J. WhittinghamAbstractAlthough policymakers and scientists are increasingly embracing the food system perspective, it has been poorly reflected in institutional terms. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question as to what forms of governance are most appropriate to govern food systems in a more holistic way. The article presents a diagnostic framework consisting of five principles: 1) system-based problem framing to deal with interlinked issues, d...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Diagnostics and field experiments
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Maarten VoorsAbstractField experiments have been embraced in development economics and political science as a core method to learn what development interventions work and why. Scientists across the globe actively engage with development practitioners to evaluate projects and programmes. However, even though field experiments have raised the bar on causality, they are often too narrowly defined and lack focus on structural development problems. Researchers and development practitioners should do more to improve the diagnostic...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

An institutional diagnostics of agricultural innovation; public-private partnerships and smallholder production in Uganda
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Diana Akullo, Harro Maat, Arjen E.J. WalsAbstractThis paper presents and discusses a diagnostic framework to identify institutional processes in the creation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for agricultural innovation. The diagnostic framework proposed here combines a conceptualisation of institutions with a conceptualisation of technology. We argue that a performative notion of institutions provides a better tool for institutional diagnostics than the common understanding of institutions as ‘rules of the game’. Th...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Diagnosing institutional logics in partnerships and how they evolve through institutional bricolage: Insights from soybean and cassava value chains in Ghana
This article proposes institutional logics as a theory and methodology for institutional diagnosis to gain insight into context-embedded negotiation and change processes created by project-based partnership interventions. We analyse the institutional logics of organisations active in the development of two value chains in Ghana to subsequently show how, in partnerships, these logics are negotiated in light of the objectives and interests of the intervention. The main findings are that donors, with their market and professionalisation logics, are quite influential, but many other development actors still adhere to principle...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

How does institutional embeddedness shape innovation platforms? A diagnostic study of three districts in the Upper West Region of Ghana
In conclusion, we stress that the institutional identity of facilitating agents and their relationship to members of the platform and to powerholders in the broader context provides a useful diagnostic lens to analyse the processes that shape the platform’s ability to achieve its goals. (Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences)
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Identifying ripple effects from new market institutions to household rules -Malawi’s Agricultural Commodity Exchange
Publication date: March 2018Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 84Author(s): Georgina Gomez, Saskia VossenbergAbstractThe introduction of new rules in an institutional field provides agents with a new set of opportunities and constraints on which they can leverage to change the rules in other institutional fields. Inspired by Elinor Ostrom, we term this causality a ripple effect, born out of the initial institutional changes. In this article we enquired in what ways women farmers could transfer genderblind changes in the market to the household. We developed a diagnostic tool to capture this propagat...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research

Frugality and cross-sectoral policymaking for food security
The objective of this paper is to adopt a bottom-up perspective to address the need for cross-sectorality in food security policies. Sustainable Rural Livelihood (SRL) and Grassroots Innovation (GI) are two well recognized schools of thought which emphasize the cross-sectoral approaches to livelihood and local level problem-solving. By embracing a frugality lens, we can offer a conceptual regularity in the patterns of behaviour and decision-making highlighted by the SRL and GI schools of thought. Taking a step further, the frugality lens, by focusing on the usefulness of a decision in the actual environment, emphasizes the...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - July 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: research