The Training Experience

The workshop, held in December, was a blend of interactive elements, including role-playing exercises, group activities, experience sharing, and critical reflection, all grounded in open innovation theories. Throughout the week, participants honed their abilities in active listening, empathy, handling challenging situations, and fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders. The goal was to empower them as innovation facilitators capable of steering projects towards success.

Toolkit for Innovation Facilitators

As a result of the training, the participants gained invaluable insights and hands-on experience with various facets of an innovation facilitator’s toolkit, from facilitating living labs for Santé & Territoires to managing innovation platforms for IRRINN and ReSiNOC, the trainees left with a wealth of tools and a clear action plan to enhance their roles in their respective DeSIRA projects.

Individualized Action Plans

Upon their departure from Cotonou, each trainee carried with them a personalized action plan crafted during the workshop. These plans will be closely monitored by the DeSIRA-LIFT trainer coaches, who will conduct in-depth sessions in January and February to ensure the trainees’ continued growth and development.

Future Cohorts and Global Reach

The Cotonou workshop marked the beginning of the DeSIRA-LIFT service offering for innovation facilitators, setting the stage for four additional cohorts. The upcoming sessions are scheduled in Madagascar (January ´24), Cameroon (February ´24), Colombia (March ´24), and Ethiopia (April ´24). The anticipation is high, and interested individuals are encouraged to stay tuned for information on registrations.

The inaugural training in Cotonou laid the foundation for DeSIRA-LIFT’s service offering and initiated a transformative learning pathway for the first cohort. As the program expands its reach to other parts of the globe, the impact of these trained innovation facilitators is expected to resonate across diverse projects, bringing about positive change and fostering a culture of innovation. For more details and to stay informed about upcoming training opportunities, please contact the team at service@desiralift.org.

Part of the course: Conducting Action-Research Interventions for Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems

Does your DeSIRA project aim to reach institutional stakeholders and policymakers to improve its policy environment? Do you worry that your project impacts lose efficiency beyond the project duration? Do you need insights into existing approaches and tools to make institutional and policy engagement effective? This special training session is for you! Over three sessions we will explore, and practice a range of tools to help you design an effective advocacy strategy, which considers the political context, how to effectively link to policymakers to achieve your goals and how to monitor and learn from your policy engagement.

Registration link here. Once registration is closed, you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This session will be run by Kat Pittore, Nutrition advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Kat has worked in advocacy with parliamentarians in the UK and Tanzania and has supported civil society and research organisations to design, monitor and evaluate their advocacy work

This training session is a pre-requisite to a session to be organized later this year ‘Using contribution analysis and process tracing to evaluate the impact of your policy engagement ’. Check out the other sessions coming soon: https://www.desiraliftcommunity.org/training-and-coaching/

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

For detailed session information, please see here

Part of the course: Conducting Action-Research Interventions for Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems

Does your DeSIRA project aim to reach institutional stakeholders and policymakers to improve its policy environment? Do you worry that your project impacts lose efficiency beyond the project duration? Do you need insights into existing approaches and tools to make institutional and policy engagement effective? This special training session is for you! Over three sessions we will explore, and practice a range of tools to help you design an effective advocacy strategy, which considers the political context, how to effectively link to policymakers to achieve your goals and how to monitor and learn from your policy engagement.

Registration link here. Once registration is closed, you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This session will be run by Kat Pittore, Nutrition advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Kat has worked in advocacy with parliamentarians in the UK and Tanzania and has supported civil society and research organisations to design, monitor and evaluate their advocacy work

This training session is a pre-requisite to a session to be organized later this year ‘Using contribution analysis and process tracing to evaluate the impact of your policy engagement ’. Check out the other sessions coming soon: https://www.desiraliftcommunity.org/training-and-coaching/

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

For detailed session information, please see here

Part of the course: Conducting Action-Research Interventions for Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems

Does your DeSIRA project aim to reach institutional stakeholders and policymakers to improve its policy environment? Do you worry that your project impacts lose efficiency beyond the project duration? Do you need insights into existing approaches and tools to make institutional and policy engagement effective? This special training session is for you! Over three sessions we will explore, and practice a range of tools to help you design an effective advocacy strategy, which considers the political context, how to effectively link to policymakers to achieve your goals and how to monitor and learn from your policy engagement.

Registration link here. Once registration is closed, you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This session will be run by Kat Pittore, Nutrition advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Kat has worked in advocacy with parliamentarians in the UK and Tanzania and has supported civil society and research organisations to design, monitor and evaluate their advocacy work

This training session is a pre-requisite to a session to be organized later this year ‘Using contribution analysis and process tracing to evaluate the impact of your policy engagement ’. Check out the other sessions coming soon: https://www.desiraliftcommunity.org/training-and-coaching/

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

For detailed session information, please see here

The module “Identifying your (potential) contributions to AIS strengthening and related challenges” was the first one in a series of activities of the course “Conducting Action-Research for strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS): Successes and challenges of DeSIRA projects”, implemented by DeSIRA LIFT SA1.

Two sessions were carried out on March 21st with the aim to provide for lively interactions between English speakers in the first session and French and Spanish speakers in the second session. 

During these intense two-hour discussions, 73 professionals from DeSIRA projects shared their significant contributions to improve AIS, as well as the challenges they face at the niche level when working with service providers, and in their endeavors to influence policy.

To introduce the topic, Aurelie Toilier, DeSIRA LIFT´s project leader, indicated that the purpose of AIS thinking is to approach innovation from a systemic perspective by paying attention to the way in which innovation emerges from complex interactions between a wide range of actors in particular conditions. 

The project’s representatives remarked on their activities to increase farmers’ capacities to deal with the challenges they face at the niche level. Thus, several projects provide training to farmers and their organizations (IRFFS in Liberia, ESSA in Ethiopia and Kenya, InACC in Nigeria, ABRIGUE in Colombia, TRANSFORMA-INNOVA in Costa Rica) and to the extension services (IRFFS). ABRIGUE and  ESSA carry out participatory research, and Malawi DeSIRA is developing and deploying climate-smart agriculture technologies. 

To the same extent, the projects are aware of the need for flexibility in their tasks and the roles they perform: researchers will need to step outside of their area and respond to concrete problems in the niches; agricultural advisory service providers have to switch from extending research outputs to users and to facilitate collaborations among multi-stakeholder partners. These changing roles require a set of new skills to navigate the complexity of AIS.

All projects seemed to agree that connecting with development actors, including NGOs, is a must in order to better understand and respond to realities regarding how innovation and change occur. For this purpose, several projects are setting-up multi-stakeholder innovation facilities, such as Living Labs, innovation platforms and innovation poles, such as the projects Santés&Territoires (in Laos, Cambodia and Benin), Malawi, and INV-Niger. Various initiatives work in non-formalized multistakeholder processes (GRAPE in Nepal, FO4RI, ABRIGUE), while others are facilitating dialog among AIS actors (InACC, ABRIGUE). Also, several projects indicated that they have sought specific partnerships through contractual arrangements of the involvement of private sector providers to facilitate support to farmers for acquiring inputs such as seeds and small machinery.

Several challenges at the managerial level were highlighted. For example, the project ABRIGUE, indicated the need for methodologies and tools to promote the exchanges to better incorporate diverse local knowledge. Also, FO4RI, a global project with 13 subprojects working in very dissimilar conditions, stressed the necessity to work more effectively to strengthen capacities for agroecological transition. Several projects are promoting dialogue among AIS stakeholders (ABRIGUE, TRANSFORMA-INNOVA) in an attempt to help coordinate the many interventions that frequently occur in the territories, which often have similar objectives but are disconnected. 

There were also multiple action points pointed out during the webinar, for example: using communication about AIS thinking and the development and dissemination of AIS-related knowledge products to enhance the embracement and implementation of AIS thinking in the future.

Finally, several of these topics will be further discussed during the upcoming modules: 

• Module 2: Acting at the innovation niche level (28th of March)
• Module 3: Acting at the level of innovation support services (4th of April)
• Module 4: Acting at the level of institutional and policy environments of innovation (20th of April)
• Module 5: Conclusion and joint reflection on action research strategies to strengthen AIS in the DeSIRA Initiative (TBD)

For more information and registration to these modules, please see here

For more information: community@desiralift.org

Please see the PowerPoint presentations from the session below

Conducting Action-Research interventions for strengthening national Agricultural Innovation Systems: ​successes and challenges in DeSIRA projects​. INTRODUCTORY MODULE –French/Spanish-speaking session​ 

Image 1: Screenshot Spanish group discussion, photo Ricardo Ramirez

ICRA has various courses starting in September 2023, which are highly aligned with the DeSIRA-LIFT C4SSIS course learning objectives

The upcoming ICRA courses are:

• Making Agribusiness Work
  1 Sept 2023 – 1 June 2024 | 8-month blended course: online/part-time and
  including one week Face-to-Face group training:  5 to 13 February 2024
• Making Agribusiness Work – Executive
  1 Sept 2023 – 1 July 2024 | 9-month blended course: online/part-time and
  including one week Face-to-Face group training:  5 to 13 February 2023

For more information and scholarship application, please check the ICRA website