Innovation Systems in African Agriculture

This discussion is proposed by Kebebe Ergano, a Research Officer at ILRI, Addis Ababa. I was fascinated by the speech from Dr. Akin Adesina (AAAE President and also Vice President, AGRA) on the need to work with partners to identify the key elements for a successful African Green Revolution. This prompted me to ask some questions. I work for fodder innovation project at International Livestock research Institute, Addis Ababa. We are using innovation systems perspective as an approach to work with multiple actors in livestock development in Ethiopia. But we are facing a lot of challenges in facilitating innovation platforms and engaging actors. We would like to learn, for example, what are the principles and rules that engage actors in innovation platforms? What are the incentives and disincentives for actors to engage in innovation platforms? What are the indicators to measure innovation capacity? The more I probed literature on agricultural innovation, the more I get dissatisfied with existing tools and techniques for innovation capacity analysis, among the many. We would like to learn from the experience of readers and AAAE members on these questions. Any piece of information on this highly appreciated.