Contents

JOURNAL ARTICLE.....................................................................................................................2
Title: An approach for integrating farmer participatory research and market orientation for
building the assets of rural poor...................................................................................................2
Abstract........................................................................................................................................2
Problem Statement.......................................................................................................................3
Hypothesis/research questions.....................................................................................................4
Delimitations................................................................................................................................4
Methodology................................................................................................................................4
Findings and Discussions.............................................................................................................5
Implications..................................................................................................................................6
Limitation (gap analysis).............................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................7
What has been learned?................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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 JOURNAL ARTICLE
P. C. Sanginga1; R. Best1; C. Chitsike2; R. Delve1; S. Kaaria1, and R. Kirkby1 (2004) Enabling
rural innovation in Africa: An approach for integrating farmer participatory research and market
orientation for building the assets of rural poor.

Key words: gender, participatory research, market opportunities, social capital, Africa, natural
resource management, scaling up

Title: An approach for integrating farmer participatory research and market

orientation for building the assets of rural poor
The title mainly targeted smallholder farmer’s key concern which is not only agricultural
productivity and household food consumption, but also increasingly better market access.
Considering the importance of trading to almost all Africans for some household needs, and
hence seek income generating activities it would be fair to say that the title is fit enough to be
selected as a topic for an article as the article tried to address one of the problems in the major
economic sector i.e. agriculture. So, it is possible to understand the topic could interest various
organizations and countries in Africa. Despite its importance the title is somehow creative as it
suggests a new way of increasing agricultural productivity and promoting sustainable
intensification of major food crops and livestock for small scale farmers. Additionally, the topic
is well crafted and narrowed the meet the requirements.

Abstract
Abstract of the study entails that the article outlines an integrated approach for demand-driven
and market-orientated agricultural research and rural agro-enterprise development as its main
objective. Additionally, abstract of the study elaborates the practical steps involved in the
framework of Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) participatory processes without mentioning the
source of data such as primary or secondary. The abstract shows results from the action research
applying the ERI approach in pilot sites in Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania show that small-scale
farmers are not always attracted by higher economic returns. In its abstract, the study concluded
that building and sustaining quality partnerships between research and development
organizations, government, private agribusiness sector; and building necessary amount of human

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and social capital over a certain period of time are critical for achieving success in small- scale
agro enterprise development. The requirement of an explicit scaling up strategy be mapped out to
link successful community processes to micro and macro level market institutions at the national
and regional levels was the recommendation of the study in the abstract.

Problem Statement
Though not clearly stated structurally, the study clearly pointed out the problems in relevance
with the topic. The study stated that despite an effort from the national governments in Uganda,
Malawi and Tanzania by increasing emphasis on transforming subsistence agriculture to make
farming a business, to create better understanding of among rural communities entrepreneur
culture, achieving best income in diverse situations, other livelihood aspirations through better
links with markets, but still with non-clear to link small-scale ways to link farmers in marginal
areas to expanding markets, and how to develop methods and approaches that effectively
integrate research and marketing and enterprise development.

The study also tried to address recent initiatives to link smallholder farmers to markets have
largely focused on export markets as these are seen as important sources of economic growth
(Jones et al., 2002; Hellin and Higman, 2002; GoU, 2003). The study critics such approaches as
they are tend to be top down where decisions regarding what products and enterprises to develop
and markets to target are often prescribed by government agencies, private companies or
development organizations. Additionally, study stated that smallholder farmers have rarely
benefited from these initiatives as they are highly competitive and specialized, with rigorous
quality standards. Most importantly, such markets are ay be seized by a few large-scale
commercial farmers as domestic markets still represent a large and growing market that ought to
offer real opportunities to small-scale farmers.

Therefore, the purpose of this paper is building farmers’ and communities’ capacity to identify
and develop market opportunities and experiment through the application of innovative
participatory approaches for creating a sustained collective capacity for innovation and for
creating new alternatives for resource-poor farmers.

The paper also clearly mentioned the significance of this approach in building the capacities of
farmers, farmers’ groups and communities to identify and evaluate market opportunities, develop

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profitable agro enterprise, intensify production while sustaining the resources upon which their
livelihoods depend.

Hypothesis/research questions
Though the objective of the paper is clearly stated, the hypothesis/research questions have not
been clearly stated in the paper. This shows that structural organization of the paper is somehow
poor.

Delimitations
Rather than prescribing enterprises and market links, our approach termed Enabling Rural
Innovation (ERI) uses participatory processes to build the capacities of farmers, farmers’ groups
and communities to identify and evaluate market opportunities, develop profitable agro
enterprise, intensify production while sustaining the resources upon which their livelihoods
depend.
The paper was delimited to the empirical results and lessons learned in implementing the ERI
approach in pilot sites in Uganda, Malawi and Tanzania through effective partnership between
international and national agricultural research organizations, development organizations,
government extension services and rural communities.

Methodology
The paper is based on empirical results and lessons learned in implementing the ERI approach in
pilot sites in Uganda, Malawi and Tanzania through effective partnership between international
and national agricultural research organizations, development organizations, government
extension services and rural communities. The rest of the paper starts by outlining the key steps
and principles of ERI approach. The implementation of ERI is in the pilot sites is described
following the key steps: building and managing partnerships; developing community visions of
desired future conditions; market opportunities identification and enterprise selection; farmers’
experimentation, building social capital and their implications for gender and equity issues,
participatory monitoring and evaluation and strategies for scaling up. Lessons learned and their
implications for research and development are discussed in the concluding section.

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Findings and Discussions
The paper followed logical steps in the implementation of ERI and the results from the pilot
sites. Accordingly;
Building and managing effective partnerships: A first step in implementing ERI is selecting,
building and sustaining effective partnership. In the three countries, ERI involves at least 13
partners comprising of international and national agricultural research institutes, government
extension services, non-governmental organizations, local administrations, and community-based
organizations, bringing different strengths to the process. ERI has followed the principles for
good practice in participatory research, and of quality partnerships and collaboration in research
(Gormley, 2001; Vernooy and McDougall, 2003).
The paper stated that ERI partnership involves 19 farmer groups and communities of variable
sizes, and over 1000 households in the three countries. The selection of the pilot sites
communities was based on a combination of a number of criteria, including opportunities for
adding value to ongoing research and development activities, good potential for scaling out to
other villages, presence of active farmers groups or local social organizations; and presence of an
active extension or development worker with sufficient motivation and skills (or willingness to
learn) to be a community development facilitator. From this it is possible to understand that the
selection process followed an institutional assessment of potential partners who saw the value of
incorporating ERI to complement their on-going research or development work, and who had
institutional capacity for working with rural communities which facilitates the very purpose of
the study which is building the capacity of farmers and communities in the sites.
Participatory diagnosis: building on community assets and opportunities rather than problems
and constraints Most FPR and rural development projects routinely start with a participatory
rural appraisal (PRA) exercise to identify problems and constraints in the farming system, and as
an entry point into communities. Recently, PRA has come under criticism for being superficial,
extractive, transitory, unable to initiate change and build local capacities (Ashby, 2003; Cook
and Kothari, 2001), and lack adequate follow up. ERI advocates for and uses a different
approach for participatory diagnostic. An important principle of this approach is that it starts
with an analysis of strengths and opportunities, rather than problems and constraints, and build
on these opportunities to develop community action plans. It seems like the paper chose

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appropriate way of analysis beginning with the strengths and opportune this ERI approach could
deliver to the community as it facilitates the change needed to bring in the community.
Identifying market opportunities and selecting community agro enterprises: according to
the study, the Market opportunity identification (MOI) stage aims to match market demand with
the biophysical potential of the region to produce or supply certain commodities or products of
agricultural, livestock, fisheries or forest origin, and the interest of farmers and other rural
producers to engage in their production. This stage ends with the identification of a basket of
options that have an identified market demand, b) can be produced in the region, and c) are of
interest to the farmers and other producers. In doing so, the study would be able to tackle the
major problem that majority of farmers in both the pilot site and whole Africa are facing.
Generally speaking, the findings of the study are well related to the topic of the study and the
problems the study intend to address. The findings were presented clearly in comparison with the
previous problems encountered in the pilot sites, so one can understand the significance of the
proposed approach by this paper.

Implications
This study have many implication and from this action research on integrating FPR and PMR for
enabling rural innovation in Africa. First, rather than prescribing market opportunities and
products to market, ERI uses community-based this community based development have many
benefit for rural Africa. Second, due to the diversity of activities involved in ERI, the success of
this work is highly dependent on the development of effective quality partnerships with research
and extensions systems, NGOs and farmer communities. Lessons learned suggest that it is
important to build necessary amount of human capital and social capital to create institutional
commitments and clarity in understanding of the roles, responsibilities and expectations of the
different partners
Generally developing sustainable rural agro-enterprise is relatively a long and intensive process
that requires effective facilitation and entrepreneurship skills and market institutional
innovations. The ERI process has been more effective at the community level. Although
individual case studies show promising signs of success and robust results, the greater challenge
lies on linking micro-level community processes to higher meso and macro-levels where market
opportunities and institutional conditions may offer much greater opportunities for small-scale
farmers. The challenge for research and development is on creating conditions under which

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national policies and market initiatives can support and benefit small-scale farmers in marginal
conditions.

Limitation (gap analysis)

The first thing that we see on the article is there is no enough data used to analysis from different
sources the support study. It only focus on the market opportunities largely and gives less
emphasis for the overall economic condition. Additionally, the paper heavenly relied on the
empirical studies in the pilot sites and the use of primary data would have made it more sound.

Conclusion
The need to increase food production in a manner that also increases the incomes of small-scale
farmers, whilst maintaining the natural resource base is widely recognized as an effective
strategy for achieving sustainable rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. However, until
recently, linking processes of technology generation with those of income generation and agro-
enterprise development is generally left to organizations that focus on either of the two.
Agricultural research organizations have largely focused on increasing the productivity of food
crops in small scale farming system, but have neglected linking farmers to markets to diversify
and increase their incomes. On the other hand, initiatives to link farmers to markets have been
spearheaded by government agencies, private sector and to some extent non-governmental
organizations. However, these have tended to focus on export crops using top down approaches.
Few look at building farmers’ capacity to identify and develop enterprise opportunities, to match
market opportunities with investment in improving the resource base, and build local capacity to
solve problems, generate and access technologies through farmer participatory research.

What has been learned?

Starting from the contents of the study, one could understand that how struggling is for rural
farmers not only in those three pilot sites but also in the whole of Africa being as they don’t have
what it takes to benefit from their resources. For countries such as Ethiopia that is highly reliant
on agricultural sector absence of clear path to link farmers in rural areas expanding markets is a
huge set back in country’s effort to become among the developed ones. I was able to learn that
the problems regarding incapability of these rural farmer not to achieve best income is not only
because of their own inability but also prescriptions from government agencies, private
companies or development organizations. In this regard, this paper forwarded some useful course

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changing approach to benefit the life of our rural farmers and communities in building their
capacity and granting market opportunities by allowing their participation in the framework
which in turn could benefit the whole society. In this regard, concerned bodies, agricultural
development researchers, NGOs and the government should work together for effective and
efficient utilization of this approach locally. Having said that, the review was really useful as it
helped me to improve my content analysis skills and logical understanding and present my
understanding as a report.

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 References
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