Sectoral Systems of Innovation – Part I

Part I

Phase I of the study was led by Bitrina Diyamett and involved three senior researchers and was completed in spring 2010. The research that was performed found out that all the three sectors selected for this study have necessary supply side actors in place, with the agricultural sector being the most diverse, possibly for historical reasons, where many different rural development strategies have been tried since independence. The three sectors have R&D organizations, training institutions, professional associations and financial institutions. In addition to R&D and professional associations, agriculture has extension services that cater for the linkage between research outputs and farmers and training organizations that train both researchers and extension service providers. Furthermore, there are various input suppliers and agro dealers that provide farmers with inputs required in their production activities. There are also financial institutions whose presences go deep down into the rural community, albeit with marginal coverage. Despite this impressive system, the performance of the sector has been very marginal means and the system is thus inefficient. The inefficiency may be due to one or all of the following: lack of linkage among the actors, wrong institutional arrangement (the way actors are connected), inadequacy of the actors, contraction within the actors that result into rigidities, presence of unnecessary actors. It can also mean that the supply side is adequate, but the problem emanate from the markets for the products. This problem can very seriously stifle innovation.