Improving access to agricultural innovations for the agroecological transition - AMINATA

Issues

In recent decades, the physical and economic environment of agricultural production has changed dramatically. To accelerate the adaptation of production systems and their transition to more sustainable and agroecological systems, producers and their organisations need to have easier and faster access to the technical or organisational innovations available. However, the last 30 years have seen a continuous decline in producer support mechanisms implemented by states or sectors. Over the same period, new producer support initiatives have emerged. These initiatives are built around support for farming innovation dynamics and led by producer organisations or NGOs.

Description

The AMINATA project is based on the assumption that building low-cost interfaces between the new producer support mechanisms and the pool of available innovations will improve their reactiveness and will make it possible to support a larger number of innovating producers effectively and sustainably.

The project will provide methodological support to strengthen these new producer support mechanisms, and will work with producers to develop and test new tools to give them rapid and autonomous access to the innovations available in their environment.

The project is structured around two components:

•  The “acting” component is organised around the design and testing of new tools and mechanisms to support farming innovation dynamics;
• The “sharing” component is organised around the sharing of experience acquired by the project within the communities of innovation support stakeholders, in Mali and the sub-region. It also entails consolidating the methodological knowledge of the supervisors and managers of innovation support mechanisms.

Expected results

The project has two expected outcomes:

1. More producers will test and more rapidly implement a larger number of technical or organisational innovations that they have helped to develop and that are compatible with their means, thanks to renewed support mechanisms;
2. The supervisors and managers of innovation support mechanisms will consolidate their methodological knowledge and be capable of effectively accompanying local innovation processes. New national experts will be trained in innovation support.

Contract partners: The AMINATA project is implemented by a consortium of five partners: