Attachments
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
The United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security (USAID/BFS), in collaboration with USAID’s E3 Analytics and Evaluation Project,1 hosted a Scaling Agricultural Innovations Workshop on July 13, 2016, in Washington, DC. The purpose of this workshop was to share and validate preliminary evidence and recommendations from a series of case studies conducted by the E3 Analytics and Evaluation Project looking at the successful scaling of pro-poor agricultural innovations through commercial pathways. The workshop sought feedback from a small group of experts on the preliminary conclusions and insights generated by the case studies on what facilitates successful scaling up and how to improve donor scaling practices.
The workshop focused on lessons learned across the five case studies, which examined the external conditions, necessary preconditions, characteristics, and strategies of the scaling process and the innovation. The five case studies focused on the scaling of: (1) hybrid maize in Zambia, (2) irrigated rice in Senegal, (3) Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags in Kenya, (4) agricultural machinery services in Bangladesh, and (5) Kuroiler chickens in Uganda. In addition, the workshop organized facilitated discussions on incorporating scaling into project design, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and partnerships.
This report provides an overview of the workshop discussions, to document the feedback and ideas shared among participants. Following a brief overview of the five case studies and the workshop participants, this report provides a descriptive narrative of the discussions during each of the workshop sessions. Although this report does not fully capture all of the details, it presents key ideas and overarching themes that may be of interest to readers engaged in the scaling of agricultural innovations in developing countries.
The Case Studies
USAID/BFS commissioned these scaling case studies to better understand the strategies and actions that organizations driving the scaling process have taken to facilitate the successful widespread adoption and diffusion of innovations by farmers. The study is part of the Bureau’s efforts to successfully and sustainably scale up innovations supported through its current and future Feed the Future (FTF) activities, and to produce lessons and guidance that USAID/BFS and USAID Missions can apply to the design, procurement, implementation, and M&E of FTF activities.
The review team conducted research for the five case studies between the fall of 2015 and summer of 2016. All case studies included in-country field work to interview and collect information from key stakeholders for each of the innovations examined. For each case study, the team collected data to examine six components of an innovation: (1) the innovation’s key characteristics, (2) the quantity of scaling actually achieved over time and space and by demographic characteristics, (3) the “business case” for adopters and suppliers, (4) the external context for scaling, (5) the scaling strategies and activities employed, and (6) the innovation’s potential demand and market size.
During the workshop, the review team presented cross-cutting lessons learned from the five case studies. The feedback and insights shared by participating experts in discussing these lessons will be incorporated into the final cross-cutting report being prepared by the review team.