Factors Influencing Scaling-up of Agricultural Innovations: Lessons from Ghana

2017

English

Agriculture-led development has become the buzzword in many development literature, given the impression that without Agriculture, development all over the world will be stalled. This assumption is premised on the fact that for the world to survive, food production to feed the ever-growing population of the world would have to be doubled by 2050 (). Achieving such greater strides in the agricultural sector growth requires the innovative use of existing and new technologies and innovations that are directed towards increased land and labor productivity, efficient use of natural resources as well as adopting policies that ensures that producers in general are able to reach markets that generate greater value additions and sustainable incomes. Ensuring that such innovations contribute to the ‘One World No Hunger’ initiative of the German Government, the project dubbed “Programme of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation” (PARI) is currently running in 12 different African Countries, each supported by the German Government through GIZ and implemented in Africa by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). This project aims at facilitating efficient and functional innovation systems research and development in partner countries. In 2016 the PARI sponsored a study into exploring the factors determining scaling up of innovations and technologies in Ghana to inform policy about the factors needing critical focus in the area of scaling up of agricultural innovations. Agricultural innovation development are seen as important tools by which majority of the poor in developing countries, whose livelihoods depends on the agriculture sector can descent out of poverty. Yet in spite of this understanding most technologies and innovations developed in such agro based still find themselves on the shelves of the scientific communities. The rate of adoption of these technologies still remains low and limited, circulated among a few farmers in most of these countries. Generally, scaling up has been given little attention especially during the research design phase which is critical for any uptake activity. It has rather been considered as post-project activity. This study was aimed at exploring the literature on Agricultural Innovations in Ghana, as a way of highlighting the potential factors that influence widespread scaling up of agricultural innovations diffusion in Ghana and elsewhere. This work was mainly carried out by reviewing previous studies carried out in Ghana on scaling up of selected Agriculture innovations in Ghana. This review study indicates that capacity building, inherent attributes of the innovation, establishment of partnership strategies are among the key factors determining widespread scaling up of new innovations in the country. The study therefore recommends that future studies on scaling up of innovations in agriculture need to broaden its scope to include all such factors. It is generally recommended that scaling up must be an integral part of any agricultural project that seeks to reach a large section of the farming population and this must start from the scratch to be able to have a wider impact on society.

Essegbey, G. O.; Omari, R.; Ampadu-Ameyaw, R.