Image from a series of ‘practice briefs’ to help guide agricultural research practitioners who seek to support and implement innovation platforms (photo credit: ILRI/Bonaventure Nyotumba).
Multi-stakeholder or innovation platforms are increasingly seen as a promising vehicle for agricultural innovation and development. In the field of agricultural research for development (AR4D), such platforms are an important element of a commitment to more intentional, structured and long-term engagement among sector stakeholders.
See ILRI capacity development brief 5, Capacity development, and innovation systems and platforms
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has been increasingly involved in innovation platforms in recent years, through its role as a core program partner of the CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics and directly through several projects like the Africa RISING (Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation) program in Ethiopia.
ILRI helped coordinate platforms as part of a MilkIT project, which has increased milk production and provided employment for women in rural India and Tanzania. Innovation platforms were also central to a smallholder goat project (imGoats) in India and Mozambique.
These are just two of the many examples of how innovation platforms and capacity development are helping ILRI meet its objectives in scaling out and up its findings. For more information, see ILRI capacity development brief 5, Capacity development, and innovation systems and platforms
This brief was published as part of an internal ‘capacity development’ week at ILRI in December 2015.
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