糖心Vlog

Issues

To address the major challenges of demographic transition, climate change, market instability and soil degradation, farmers in Madagascar will need to adopt new agricultural practices or more effective organisation systems. In other words, they will need to innovate. Practice change, or innovation, is a complex and fragile process that requires an enabling environment: knowledge, material resources, a buoyant market, and so on.

Various systems have been set up by development stakeholders in Madagascar to provide farmers with services and to help them to innovate. Among these systems, programmes for the direct transfer of new technologies have had mixed results. Other support models propose a less direct approach, based on support and co-construction: coaching, maîtres exploitants (master farmers), innovation platforms, farmer field schools, etc. Their results seem promising, but need to be confirmed by a rigorous study.

The goal of the MAKIS project (2022-2027) is to build the capacities of stakeholders in agricultural development to support innovation in rural areas by studying the innovation processes and mechanisms set up to support them.

Description

To achieve this goal, the MAKIS project will:

• study the way in which innovation is achieved in small family farms as well as how stakeholders in agricultural development support it, by analysing and comparing 10 case studies on Madagascar;
• test an improvement process concerning four pilot schemes for innovation support;
• propose changes to Madagascar’s national agricultural support system to better accompany innovation based on the results of the project at the regional level in the nine regions of intervention, then at the national level.

The MAKIS project adopts an action research approach, combining diagnosis and analysis activities with technical and organisational experimentation activities. It is conducted in partnership with two research centres (IRD and FOFIFA), six development operators, and the decentralised technical departments in nine regions. It is based on participatory workshops and fosters interdisciplinarity between human sciences, life sciences and technical sciences. It builds on the partnerships established in the context of the Forests & Biodiversity and SPAD platforms in partnership (dP).

Expected results

• Rural innovation processes and innovation support methods in Madagascar will be identified, analysed and compared;
• An improvement process for existing innovation support systems in Madagascar will be validated;
• A community of practice of “innovation supporters” will emerge, enabling sharing of experience, knowledge and advice;
• Recommendations on improving Madagascar’s national agricultural support system will be proposed to ministers and to technical and financial partners.