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2010 Discussion Paper 02
BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT
ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR
AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST
JULY 2010
D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 2
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This document is an output from the Research Into Use Programme (RIU) funded by
the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of
developing countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DFID.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San
Francisco, California, 94105, USA
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 3
BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES
IN EAST AFRICA AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE
FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Andy Hall
1
, Norman Clark
2
and Andy Frost
3
Abstract
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of
a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and
development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in
East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction
and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between
mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental activities of government
programmes, NGOs and development projects. This type of enterprise activity is not
corporate social responsibility, but an altogether new type of business model that is
blending entrepreneurial skills and perspectives with mission statements that seek to both
serve the needs of poor customers and address their welfare. The ethos is both “bottom-
up” and “bottom-line”. This paper classifies these organisations as Development-Relevant
Enterprises (DevREs).The experience of the Research into Use (RIU) programme discussed in
this paper suggests that supporting these types of entrepreneurial activity may form the
basis of a new mode of development assistance aimed at using innovation for both social
and economic purposes.
Key words: Development-Relevant Enterprises, Agricultural Research, Agricultural
Innovation, East Africa
JEL Codes: N5, N57, O13, O19, O31, Q13, Q16
RIU DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES
1
Head of the Research Into Use (RIU) Central Research Team (CRT)
2
Senior Adviser, RIU
3
Deputy Director, RIU
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ACRONYMS 5
1. INTRODUCTION 6
2. AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION, DEVELOPMENT AND THE
PRIVATE SECTOR 10
3. THE RESEARCH INTO USE (RIU) PROGRAMME 14
4. CASE STUDIES OF DEVRES AND ASSOCIATED INITIATIVES 16
CASE STUDY 1: REAL IPM COMPANY 16
CASE STUDY 2: FARM INPUT PROMOTIONS AFRICA – FIPS AFRICA 19
CASE STUDY 3: WELL TOLD STORY LTD. – SHUJAAZ FM RADIO AND
COMIC STRIP 21
TABLE 1: EXTENSION MESSAGES 23
CASE STUDY 4: CABI AND ECOAGRICONSULT INITIATIVE ON
COMMUNITY-BASED CONTROL OF ARMY WORM 23
CASE STUDY 5: STAMP OUT SLEEPING SICKNESS 24
5. CONTOURS OF THE BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE BUSINESS
MODEL AND DEVRES 27
TABLE 2: RIU PROJECTIONS OF IMPACTS FROM ITS BEST BETS PROJECTS 30
6. ROLE OF DEVRES IN AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION 32
7. CONCLUDING POINTS 35
REFERENCES 41
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 5
LIST OF ACRONYMS
AECF - African Enterprise Challenge Fund
AGRA - Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
COLEACP - Europe-Africa-Caribbean-Pacific Liaison Committee
CRT - Central Research Team
CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility
DevRe - Development-Relevant Enterprise
DFID - Department for International Development
EU - European Union
FIPS-Africa - Farm Input Promotions Africa
FVM - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
IDE - International Development Enterprises
IPM - Integrated Pest Management
NAADS - National Agricultural Advisory and Development Service
NARC - National Agricultural Research Council
NGO - Non-Governmental Organisation
ODA - Overseas Development Assistance
PIP - Pesticide Initiative Programme
R&D - Research and Development
RIU - Research Into Use
RNRRS - Renewable Natural Resources Research Strategy
SCODP - Sustainable Community Orientated Development programme
SIDA - Swedish International Development Agency
SOS - Stamp Out Sleeping Sickness
UNDP - United Nations Development Program
USAID - United States Agency for International Development
USDA - United States Department of Agriculture
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 6
1. INTRODUCTION
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of
a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and
development
4
. These debates have proposed the private sector as a source of R&D
expertise; as a client-responsive mechanism for distributing products embodying the results
of scientific research; as conduits to high-value markets as well as a source of information
about the nature of demand and regulation in these markets; as a source of new business
models that can efficiently service the needs of large markets of poor people; as a
mechanism for the delivery of services and products that sit at the interface of public
responsibility and private interest (such as agricultural extension and responses to livestock
disease and pest outbreaks); and as a broker or intermediary agent, making links,
negotiating partnerships and policy changes and communicating information, aspirations
and agendas. Partnership between the private sector and public agencies and other
development actors has been at the heart of these debates. The notion of inclusive business
has been held up as a new vision of private sector-centric development efforts. In reality,
however, the participation of the private sector in such roles has been less than anticipated.
This still leaves open a question over whether the mainstream private sector can really
become a genuine development partner and what are the alternatives?
This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that
would seem to have an important role in nascent agricultural innovation systems orientated
towards tackling development goals of poverty reduction and food security. These
organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises
and the developmental activities of government programmes, NGOs and development
projects. This type of enterprise activity is not corporate social responsibility, but an
altogether new type of business model that is blending entrepreneurial skills and
perspectives with mission statements that seek to both serve the needs of poor customers
and address their welfare. The ethos is both “bottom-up” and “bottom-line”. This paper
classifies these organisations as Development-Relevant Enterprises (DevREs).
4
See for example: Hall (2006), Hall et al (2002), Byerlee and Echeverría (2002)
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 7
The paper outlines five such cases. The first is a company that initially emerged in Kenya to
service the large-scale horticultural sector’s need for bio-control pest management
approaches that conform to European market regulation. The company is now targeting
smallscale farmers’ need for bio-control agents to combat Striga (a parasitic weed of the
food staple crop maize). The second initiative aims to do a similar thing with the migratory
pest army worm. A third organisation is acting as a broker negotiating access to new crop
varieties developed by national agricultural research organisations and working with input
supply companies, by persuading them to produce micro-seed and fertiliser packs that small
farmers can afford. A fourth is a company that has established a multimedia platform (print,
internet and radio) to communicate with Kenyan youth and is using this to sell advertising
for soft drinks and mobile phone companies while also raising revenue from development
agencies for communicating agricultural development messages. The fifth is an initiative
established as a spin-off from a university that is establishing a network of veterinary
services aimed at creating self-employment for recent graduates and diploma holders and,
in the process, propagating a novel approach to eliminating sleeping sickness by eradicating
the parasite in the livestock reservoir.
Each of these organisations has been set up or is staffed by individuals who have both
business and developmental skills as well as the specific technical expertise often acquired
from research for development careers. Hence their professional networks are wide and
diverse, spanning the development community, the private sector, and research and tertiary
education. These initiatives are notable for three characteristics. The first is the provision of
services and supply of inputs using market-based principles that rely on revenue from either
the poor themselves or government and development assistance or usually a combination
of the two. The second characteristic is that services provided are often of an intermediary
nature, helping bridge gaps among other players in the innovation system. Alternatively the
enterprises are operating as part of a wider coalition of private sector and development
partners, where champion organisations have stepped forward to facilitate the connections
needed to mobilise expertise and resources to tackle complex societal issues at the interface
of public and private responsibility and interests (army worm control being a case in point.
Thirdly, they often involve establishing rural networks of advisers/experts/para-workers
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 8
with an explicit agenda of employment generation for rural youth as well as degree and
certificate holders.
The organisations and initiatives discussed in this paper are all partners in the Research into
Use (RIU) programme of the Department for International Development (DFID), established
to experiment with and identify opportunities to bridge the gap between research and
innovation. This represents a new type of donor-funded programme that spans both
research and developmental objectives, with an explicit objective of understanding how to
add value to existing research knowledge and, where needed, how to strengthen emerging
innovation arrangements that have significant developmental potential. The initiatives were
selected competitively and judged in terms of how additional capital investments in novel
business models could mobilise research-derived and other knowledge for innovation
5
. The
important caveat was that these business models should also explicitly service the needs of
poor people.
The purpose of the paper is not to suggest that this new type of organisation, or DevRE, and
the business models that they represent are a new development blueprint that can be
widely replicated. Rather, the purpose is to draw attention to the fact that within the vast
diversity of private sector activity in East Africa a range of new business models and
organisational formats are emerging which, if properly understood and appropriately
nurtured, could make an important contribution to innovation-driven sector development
and associated welfare gains. None of them is itself a blueprint for change. Rather, they
each represent a combination of illustrative approaches on how organisations can
participate in an inclusive, business-for-development agenda.
We begin with a brief introduction to contemporary debates about agricultural innovation,
development and the private sector. The idea of an inclusive business approach is discussed
in this context. Section 3 provides some background on the RIU programme as a way of
explaining the way the organisations and initiatives discussed in the case studies were
identified and supported. This leads into the case studies themselves in Section 4. Section 5
5
RIU supports a sixth project in East Africa under the African Best Bets initiative that deals with the promotion of NERICA rice
and which is not covered in this paper due to space constraints. See www.researchintouse.org
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Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 9
draws out the key generic features of the organisations observed and the roles that they are
playing in nascent agricultural innovation systems. The following section (6) reviews the
extent to which the cited DevREs are assuming these roles. The final section (7) discusses
the policy significance of the emergence of these new types of organisation and is aimed at
decisionmakers in national and international arenas responsible for investments in
agricultural research and innovation.
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 10
2. AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION, DEVELOPMENT
AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR
A key feature of the debate about the nature of agricultural innovation in developing
countries has been the understanding that that it is a process embedded in a much wider
set of relationships than those implied by research-extension-farmer linkages. Biggs and
Clay (1981) and Biggs (1990) talked of different and multiple sources of innovation. Röling
(1992) introduced the idea of agricultural knowledge systems and the Wageningen School of
Innovation Studies used such ideas to explore multi-actor rural innovation landscapes (see
Engel, 1997; Leeuwis and Pyburn, 2002). At the same time two interlinked debates were
also going on. First, starting in the 1980s was the global trend to revisit the role of the state
in national economies. This rolled out from Europe and North America to emerging
economies of South Asia and Africa as an accompaniment to development assistance and
development bank investment conditionality — so-called structural adjustment. The second
was the reappraisal of the role of private sector activity in innovation in the most successful
economies and the realisation that innovation was not solely associated with public R&D (or
even R&D, more generally) but was an activity distributed through the whole of the
economy. The most successful countries were found to be those where dense networks of
interaction underpinned a national system of innovation (Freeman, 1987).
This idea of a national system of innovation was later adapted to explore the innovation
process in agricultural development (Hall et al, 1998; 2002; Hall, 2007). This built on the
work of Biggs, Röling and others, but was much more explicit about the importance of
private sector actors in the agricultural innovation process and flagged the fact that the
macro enabling environment for innovation was as important as the micro-innovation
activities of farmers in the rural space (World Bank, 2006). Early work rather prematurely
predicted that such private sector-dependent models of innovation had potential for
development goals such as poverty reduction (Hall et al, 2002). More recent writing on
agricultural innovation systems has embraced a greater diversity of innovation
arrangements — some more participatory, some more research–driven (Hall, 2009). This
line of thinking nevertheless flags the importance of the private sector for different types of
innovation activity and at different points in the innovation trajectory (Hall, 2005; 2009).
Discussion Paper 02: BOTTOM-UP, BOTTOM-LINE: DEVELOPMENT-RELEVANT ENTERPRISES IN EAST AFRICA AND
THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 11
Within this broad conceptualisation the private sector has been perceived as fulfilling the
following roles:
i. As a source of R&D activity and expertise (Echeverría, 1998)
ii. As a client-responsive mechanism for distributing products embodying the results of
scientific research (Morris, 2000)
iii. As conduits to high-value markets and as a source of information about the nature of
demand and regulation in these markets (World Bank, 2006; Kaplinsky and Morris,
2001)
iv. As a source of new business models and innovation processes that can efficiently
service the needs of large markets of poor people (Prahalad, 2004; Kaplinsky et al,
2010)
v. As a mechanism for delivery services and products that sit at the interface of public
responsibility and private interest, such as agricultural extension (Sulaiman, 2000)
and responses to livestock disease (Dijkman, 2009) and crop pest outbreaks
vi. As a broker of intermediary agents, making links, negotiating partnerships and
policies and communicating information, aspirations and agendas (Klerkx et al, 2009)
In the case of the emerging economies of Africa, much was expected of the private sector,
given widespread public sector failure. Structural adjustment programmes spelt an end for
important parastatal bodies such as marketing boards, which while imperfect, did often play
an invaluable intermediary role in markets for key agricultural commodities. Quite often the
private sector simply failed to emerge as a viable alternative to the ineffective state
mechanisms. This was particularly so in marginal areas where the rural poor lived
(Stringfellow, 1995).
Of course in a sense the private sector always was an important player. It has been
prominent in input supply (seeds, tools, machinery, agro-chemicals) and commodity trading
(including value chain supply for high-income African urban markets as well as those in
Europe and North America). The real problem, however, was that such mechanisms failed to
service the needs of the poorest rural households. The private sector has tended to operate
in those segments of the market where it can make a profit most easily — large-scale, well-
organised agricultural producers in accessible areas (for example, see the discussion of
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THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 12
horticulture sector development in Kenya in Steglich et al, 2009). This has not necessarily
mapped onto the needs and location of poor people, particularly the rural poor.
More generally there is a now a decade of well-documented difficulties in engaging the
private sector as a development partner. Tensions between the public and private sectors
have hampered partnership formation (Hall et al, 2002; Spielman et al, 2009). Intermediary
organisations capable of brokering new partnerships with the private sector have often
been absent (World Bank, 2006). Examples of successful public-private sector partnerships
in the agricultural sector do exist (Byerlee and Echeverría, 2002). However, a small number
of high-profile examples involving multinational corporations have been widely-publicised
and these types of mechanisms have tended to dominate the debate (Hall, 2005). This has
eclipsed the policy importance of strengthening the role of local private sector
organisations, with a resulting neglect of the role of strengthening relationships between
local private sector firms and other players within the innovation landscape (ibid).
The private sector’s role in agricultural extension, intermediation and innovation brokering
has also been widely discussed (Sulaiman, 2000; Sulaiman and Hall, 2004; Klerkx et al, 2009).
However, experiences such as that of the National Agricultural Advisory and Development
Service (NAADS) in Uganda, which relied on local private service providers, suggest that it
was first necessary to create local private capacity (Kidd, 2002; Hall and Yoganand, 2004).
Klerkx et al (2009) explain that such innovation brokers often find it hard to persuade both
farmer clients and governments to pay for an intermediation service that is useful, but at
the same time intangible.
More recently there has been discussion of the possible emergence of new business models
that rely on innovation processes that respond to the existence of large markets of poor
people. Prahalad (2004) referred to this as “innovation at the bottom of the pyramid” and
predicted that the locus of corporate sector innovation in a globalised knowledge economy
would shift from Europe and North America, so that it was contextualised within product-
user environments. Kaplinsky et al (2010) refer to this as “below the radar” innovation, and
argue that its location has not only shifted to emerging economic systems of China and Asia,
but is often taking place outside the organisational and professional vision of the corporate
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THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 13
sector and organised science — hence its invisibility. Kaplinsky et al suggest that these new
and as yet invisible modes of innovation may have development significance for other
emerging economies, particularly those in Africa.
A related concept that is currently receiving considerable donor attention is that of inclusive
business models — business models that include the poor as clients and customers on the
demand side or as employees, producers and business owners on the supply side. According
to those promoting such approaches, inclusive business models are designed to deliver
benefits for business and for low-income communities — generating profits while at the
same time creating jobs, expanding access to critical products and services, and increasing
incomes. For companies, these models are opportunities to pursue growth and
competitiveness while leveraging core assets and activities for development impact. For
development organisations, inclusive business models promise to empower the poor as
economic agents and drive development in ways that are financially self-sustaining, with the
potential to scale up and out (UNDP, 2008). While conceptually elegant, the practicalities of
this approach have yet to take operational form.
More worrying, still, a recent review by Arora and Romijn (2009) cautions that there is very
little empirical evidence that “bottom of the pyramid”-type approaches are spreading and
that some of the assumptions of this type of business model are naive and unlikely to attract
widespread private sector participation.
So despite well-founded arguments of the importance of private sector organisations in a
variety of roles related to agricultural innovation and development what, in fact, is the
reality? Can the private sector really play a role that truly has developmental significance as
part of its own business model? Or does its role extend no further than corporate social
responsibility and all the limitations that accompany that idea? Does a private sector that
can play this role even exist? Or will the needs of agriculture-dependent poor people need
to be met by public agencies and public money for the foreseeable future? Can the dream of
collaboration for innovation, profit and development become a reality?
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Research Into Use ANDY HALL, NORMAN CLARK AND ANDY FROST 14
3. THE RESEARCH INTO USE (RIU) PROGRAMME
The DevREs discussed in this paper have come to attention as an identifiable class of
organisation as a result of the DFID-sponsored Research into Use Programme (RIU). The RIU
programme began in July 2006 as a follow-up to DFID’s £220m investment in the Renewable
Natural Resources Research Strategy (RNRRS), its flagship agricultural research funding
mechanism between 1995 and 2006. The final evaluation of RNRRS (Spencer et al, 2005)
suggested that while it had generated good scientific research, its development impact had
been modest. Hence RIU was conceived as an activity that would link together the many
agents involved in innovation — policymakers, researchers, suppliers and end users — and
enable a system that uses research to benefit the poor. One component of this programme
is that of “Best Bets”. These were originally conceived as technologies that show promise for
simply being rolled out by the private sector. However, it subsequently evolved into a series
of exploratory projects with a range of activities with large entrepreneurial content. These
are being supported as a way of facilitating technology diffusion as well as helping nurture
the kinds of linkages needed to underpin a sustained capacity for innovation. RIU is using
these as applied policy experiments to learn how to link research and innovation.
This represents a new type of donor-funded programme that spans both research and
developmental objectives. It has an explicit objective of understanding how to add value to
existing research knowledge and, where needed, how to strengthen emerging innovation
arrangements that have the potential to be of developmental significance. The selection of
these partners mimicked a venture capital investment selection process. They were, thus,
judged in terms of how additional capital investments in novel business models could
mobilise research-derived and other knowledge for innovation. The important caveat was
that these business models should also service the needs of poor people. This often involved
developing markets among the poor for new technologies and expert services so that once
developed the private sector could supply these in a sustainable way. As would be expected
an open call for proposals that would fulfil these criteria elicited applications from
organisations and clusters of organisations that are operating at the interface of enterprise
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activity and developmental concerns. The 5 short case studies that follow were
organisations and projects selected by RIU.
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4. CASE STUDIES OF DEVRES AND ASSOCIATED INITIATIVES
(i) Case Study 1: Real IPM Company
This case examines the way The Real IPM Company developed as a response to an emerging
market for bio-control systems in the horticulture and flower export sector. The company
has developed a business model that blends conventional revenues for its expert services
and bio-control products with development assistance money, often through challenge
funds, in order to develop products and services that can be sold to small-scale producers.
Such initiatives usually involve complex partnership agreements. RIU’s support to Real IPM
is an example of market development funding to create a sustainable revenue stream from
supplying products and advice to poor people.
Origins
The Real IPM Company is a Kenya-based company established in 2004 to commercialise
biological control pest agents for the horticultural industry. Its origins can be traced back to
2000, when Kenya’s largest horticultural and floriculture exporter, the Flamingo Holdings
Group (better known as Homegrown Company), established Dudutech as a subsidiary to
develop biological controls systems to reduce pesticide use in the horticulture/ floricultural
sector. Dudutech was established as a response to regulatory issues in its major market of
Europe; there was a both a need to reduce pesticide residues, but also human rights issues
associated with exposing workers to these during application. The company’s first major
success was the development of a control agent spider mite in roses with the use of
Phytoseiulus persimilis (a predatory mite of red spider mite). Bio-control systems for this
and other pests are now widely used in the industry.
Two of the key personnel brought into Dudutech to develop mass-rearing capabilities and
integrated pest management (IPM) protocols were an independent IPM consultant from the
UK and a former Professor of Horticulture who had worked in agricultural research at the
Natural Resources Institute under the UK’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)
programme (Labuschagne, 2004). These two experts established Real IPM in 2004 with a
vision of practical, sustainable and affordable reductions in pesticide use for both large-scale
commercial growers and small-scale subsistence farmers throughout Africa and elsewhere.
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Mission
The company’s mission statement explains that it brings “innovation, experience and above
all a passion for empowering growers to self-reliance in low-pesticide regimes, in plantation
crops, cereals, fruit, vegetable and flower crops” (http://www.realipm.com/aboutus.asp.)
Real IPM staff has worked in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia,
Mozambique, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana.
Real IPM’s website explain its niche as one of providing a comprehensive suite of training
and consultancy packages aimed at bringing clients up to speed on all aspects of best
practice in sustainable pest and disease management programmes, with particular focus on
compliance with the regulatory regimes governing imports of fresh produce into the EU
(food safety, pesticide residues etc). The company also produces and sells seven biological
control agents to deal with a range of crop pests.
The company currently employs 80 staff, including nine graduates, and has an annual
turnover of £600,000. The company has a number of revenue sources. It sells its services
and products to the horticultural industry and elsewhere in a conventional way. It also sells
its services and products to both the industry and to small-scale producers via project
funding. For example, it implemented a project under the Pesticide Initiative Programme
(PIP), an EU-funded project managed by COLEACP (Europe-Africa-Caribbean-Pacific Liaison
Committee). Development projects include projects from DFID’s Business Services
Management Development Programme; USAID’s Kenya Horticultural Development
Programme; USAID’s Ethiopian Agribusiness and Trade Expansion Programme; USAID’s
Honduras Rural Economic Diversification programme; USDA’s Ethiopian Technical
Cooperation Extension programme; the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Agency for
International Business Cooperation (EVD); SIDA’s Bio Earn Innovation Programme; and
World Wildlife Fund and The Obsolete Pesticides Stockpile Programme.
Another source of revenue has been through various businesses for development challenge
fund-type arrangements. For example, Real IMP applied to the Business in Development
network for support to develop a partnership with the Kenyan Agricultural Research
Institute for the purpose of commercial mass production of nematodes for bio-control of
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thrips — a major pest in subsistence and export crops. Similarly Real IPM was awarded a
matching funded contract to commercialise Fusarium oxysporum f sp Isolate Foxy 2 as a
mycoherbicide for Striga (a parasitic weed of maize) by the African Enterprise Challenge
Fund (AECF).
Real IPM does not view its commercial focus on the small-hold sector as corporate social
responsibility and has set up a not-for-profit wing call Real Impact for CSR purposes.
The focus of its activities under RIU is the promotion of an already-developed bio-herbicide
to control the parasitic weed Striga, and the use of seed priming. As mentioned above, a
project focused on the registration and production of the bio-herbicide had been supported
with a matching grant from the African Challenge Fund. The RIU project is entirely focused
on promoting the micro-herbicide seed treatment technology along with good agricultural
practices to subsistence maize farmers. The initiative is promoting small seed treatment
packs for farmer-saved seed. Popularisation of the approach will improve subsistence maize
production and, at the same time, create a market for Real IPM’s biological control agent
fusium sp.
RIU support is being used for:
The establishment and training of a support network of 100 field workers of national
programmes, NGOs, etc.
Promoting the technology through radio programmes and advertising, and
communication via a text messaging service
Support for farmers in three successive waves of plantings in Nyanza province by
distribution of small-scale technology packs to 48,000 farmer households
The implementation of the project involves a number of partnerships with European
universities that are responsible for developing the Striga bio-herbicide seed treatment and
improved agronomic practices for maize production. Other partners include the Kenyan
Agricultural Research Institute, which has an extensive collection of beneficial micro-
organisms with potential for bio-control applications.
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The financial benefits of the RIU project to small-scale farmers are estimated at 1,800 Ksh
per hectare, or 250 kgs/ha of increased maize yield per crop, more in heavily Striga-infested
fields. The estimated value to the rural economy of the target area (Nyanza district) will be
25.9 million Ksh (around $300,000) in one planting season, assuming an uptake of 10% of
the households. Expected returns to Real IPM have not been disclosed, but with a target of
48,000 farmers in the first two years long-term revenues could be substantial.
(ii) Case Study 2: Farm Input Promotions – Africa (FIPS-Africa)
FIPS is a Kenyan not-for-profit company established in 2003. Its unique feature is the mass
promotion of improved technology through small, affordable packs of seeds and fertilisers.
Its operations in some of the poorest areas of Kenya has shown that farmers who are
encouraged to try out new technology using small affordable packages return to their local
stockists to purchase ever-larger quantities of inputs, thus improving food security
independently without the need for credit or handouts. This strategy has reduced four main
constraints to fertiliser usage: (a) availability of appropriate fertilisers, (b) unit cost of
standard bags of fertilisers; (c) inefficient fertiliser use, and (d) private sector unwillingness
to invest in development of markets for small-scale farmers.
(http://www.worldbank.org/afr/fertilizer_tk/documentspdf/FIPS_SmallPacks_Demos.pdf)
FIPS has also had a good track record of providing farmers with access to new varieties from
national research organisations. Activities under the RIU project — which involves a wide
coalition of public and private actors — focus on strengthening local advisory agents to help
popularise the small seed and fertiliser packs. RIU support is also helping strengthen the
market orientation of FIPS.
Origins
The origins of FIPS Africa can be traced back to 1990 with the establishment of a Kenyan
NGO called Sustainable Community Orientated Development programme (SCODP), which
aimed to make fertiliser available in small packages to farmers who were previously unable
to use it due to high costs. SCODP set up a network of shops and within five years each was
selling 10 tonnes of 1-2 kg packs of fertilisers (rather than the 50 kg pack sold by most
agricultural dealers).
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By 2003 SCOPD realised it needed to broaden its scope beyond fertilisers into seeds and
that this would need a different organisational structure that not only had a broader reach
and stronger links with research organisations but also a stronger negotiation role to help
make appropriate inputs available through existing retail channels. FIPS was set up as a
commercial entity (rather than as an NGO) specifically so that it could deal more effectively
with input suppliers. FIPS employs small teams of promoters who work on market days to
encourage farmers to take mini-packs of seeds along with other purchases. Notable
successes include the widespread promotion of streak-resistant maize varieties. The
company has developed relationships with a large number of leading private sector, input-
supply companies, and scientists at NARCs and is now seeking to partner with a novel youth
communications initiative to popularise its extension messages to a much larger audience
(more on this in the next case study)
Mission and Niche
FIPS thus built on the work of SCOPD. It developed an approach that explicitly identified the
farmer as its partner. It works with any source of information in an area (from NGOs, private
companies and researchers) to identify major constraints. Farmers, using mini-kits and
simple experimental protocols, are encouraged to test for themselves the most promising
options (Blackie and Albright, 2005). FIPS places great emphasis on this process of
“empowering farmers to use new technologies”.
FIPS describes itself as an honest broker. Its initial source of funding came through project
grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and DFID’s Crop Protection Programme. Later on
USAID and AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) provided support.
FIPS’ proposal to RIU was to engage the youth as agricultural advisors and scale up this
activity to reach many more farmers in target regions.
RIU Support is being used for:
Input Supply: A continuation of the small seed and fertiliser packs, but with an
expanded range of products.
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Technical Advice: Expansion of FIPS-Africa’s networks of village-based agricultural
advisers in target districts. These advisors are mainly unemployed youth who, with
limited employment opportunities available in rural areas, would otherwise migrate
to Nairobi.
Business Development: Providing incentives for its advisers to generate income from
selling fertilisers and seeds directly to farmers. Advisers also generate income from
vaccinating local poultry against Newcastle disease. The rationale is that this
motivates staff to reach more farmers, and provides an exit strategy for staff after
cessation of donor funding. In addition FIPS-Africa works closely with two firms in
the private mining sector to supply small affordable packs of fertiliser input, thus
creating jobs in the formal sector. The intention is to formalise this relationship and
enable FIPS-Africa to benefit financially.
FIPS estimates that there are approximately 12 million small-holder farmer families in the
region to which this range of products/technologies could be offered. It predicts that
funding under RIU will enable the initiative to reach approximately 10% of these farmers
(iii) Case Study 3: Well Told Story Ltd. — Shujaaz FM Radio and Comic Strip
This case discusses a relatively new company called Well Told Story Ltd. It was established
by a commercial media professional to exploit what he perceived to be a niche in the
market that sits between development communication and commercial advertising. The
company has targeted teenagers and young adults. Kenya, like many emerging economies,
has a large young population. Farming holds few attractions for them, but in rural areas
there is little else in terms of employment opportunities. Well Told Story Ltd recognised the
need to give teenagers and young adults important life messages, but recognised the
challenge of doing so without being patronising. The company also recognised that this
large population was also the same market segment that soft drinks and mobile phone
companies want to target their products to.
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Origins
As a vehicle for its business model Well Told Story Ltd. has developed an FM radio segment
and comic strip called Shujaaz — Swahili slang for ‘heroes’. These describe a world that is
recognisably Kenyan and populated by characters such as Boyie — roughly translated as
geezer — a geeky-cool school-leaver with a shock of dreadlocks, glasses and a pirate radio
station in a shed. Then there is Maria Kim, the foxy teenager who plays mum to her little
brother in a slum shack and has to avoid predatory men on her way to school, and Charlie
Pele, the football-mad 14-year-old living with his father in a camp for people displaced by
the violence that tore through Kenya after the 2007 elections. The speech bubbles are in
“sheng”, a blending of English and Swahili slang that has become the language of Kenya’s
youth — adults don’t get it, which is just the point. Shujaaz is distributed once a month
across Kenya inside the Daily Nation newspaper. (More details can be seen at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6966930.ece)
A website (http://www.shujaaz.fm/) and a daily radio show simulating Boyie’s pirate station
have also been launched. When Boyie asks his comic strip audience to text him the real
audience will be able to join in, blurring the lines between fiction and reality as the comic
book characters take on real lives. This, therefore, creates an interactive mechanism for
communicating with a key target group for development efforts as well as a key market for
phones and drinks and other companies.
Initial support for Well Told Story came from the British High Commission in Nairobi. RIU
support was initially to be used to link Well Told Story with the FIPS initiative mentioned
above, but it has been supported separately to allow it to pursue a wider agenda.
The first comic book was distributed through the Saturday Nation in February 2010 (200,000
copies). Around 300,000 copies of the first edition were distributed in March (staggered
over two weeks) through 9,000 Safaricom Mpesa (mobile phone-based money transfer
services) kiosks. An example of a story funded by RIU is that of dyeing chickens pink (which
protects poultry from aerial predators). While a fun story, poultry could still be easily sold
and so the story provided ideas that readers could then use and generate cash. Examples of
the messages transmitted can be seen in Table 1.
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Table 1. Extension Messages
Edition
Date
Story supported by RIU funding
1
February 27, 2010
Pink chickens – protected against birds of prey
2
March 27, 2010
Breeding Termites as chicken feed
3
April 24, 2010
Manual box baling of maize stover
4
May 22, 2010
Solar Drying technologies for Fruit
Improved Sweet Potato vines
5
June 26, 2010
Chicken Vaccines
6
July 24, 2010
New Maize Varieties & Seed Priming
Well Told Story Ltd. estimates that through its radio, website and comic strip it will reach
more than 6 million youths each month.
(iv) Case Study 4: CABI and EcoAgriConsult Initiative on Community-Based Control of
Armyworm
This case discusses a consortium of researchers, NGOs and government ministries that have
joined forces to tackle a migratory pest, the African armyworm (Spodoptera exempta).
What is notable here is the way CABI has been able to broker this consortium and the way it
has been able to persuade government ministries in both Kenya and Tanzania to address the
public good issues of migratory pest control in a novel way. The novelty of the approach is
that it (a) firstly, combines pest prediction with pest control (b) secondly, uses it to involve
communities in these activities and (c) thirdly, mobilises the private sector to provide
pheromone traps for forecasting and bio-control agents. RIU is supporting market
development through training and social marketing.
Origins
African armyworm is a moth that produces caterpillars in such high densities that they
appear to march across the landscape. The caterpillars feed on all types of grasses and have
become a major problem for food production in many parts of East Africa. Moreover it is a
problem that conventional extension services have a hard time dealing with, since by the
time the outbreak has been recognised countervailing measures are relatively ineffective.
The consortium working on these initiatives actually started life as two separate consortia,
one dealing with prediction and one dealing with control. Both consortia had long-
established partnerships built around a series of research projects developing the prediction
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and control approaches. These consortia have been expanded (and now merged) to involve
both government agencies responsible for migratory pest control and the private sector as a
source of diagnostic materials and control measures.
The initiative supported by RIU involves two elements:
i. Forecasting traps: These use pheromones to attract female moths and are placed in
villages to indicate when an outbreak is due
ii. A Biopesticide, SpexNPV, produced by a private firm EcoAgriConsult, which is then
sold to the villages where the outbreak is forecast
The main focus of RIU involves training and popularisation at the community level and
hence market development for a system that relies on the private companies to supply
traps (for predictive purposes) and bio-control agents
The initiative’s key characteristic is the creation of networked capacity for innovation among
all relevant stakeholder groupings. The project is led by CABI Africa (an international
research-based NGO) and closely assisted by a Tanzanian consulting firm (EcoAgriConsult)
and other technical groups. The team is working with suppliers to ensure that the
forecasting pack (pheromone and trap) is made available to communities so that they can
forecast invasions. One of the companies involved will also establish a facility for making the
biopesticide SpexNPV. It is likely that the forecasting packs will be available before SpexNPV
has been given usage permission by the regulatory authority, but in the short-term synthetic
pesticides will be used in conjunction with the forecasting. Both products will need to be
sold widely to be financially viable. The success of this initiative may therefore be
dependent on expansion throughout East Africa.
(v) Case Study 5: Stamp out sleeping sickness
This case discusses the way a consortium based around the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
(FVM) at Makerere University, Uganda has developed and supported a model of livestock
disease control based around establishing micro-enterprises in rural areas to provide
livestock health services. The initiative emerges out of many years of research on the target
disease and has been made possible by policy changes within Uganda that have made an
alternative approach to disease control possible. These policy changes have also been
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supportive of the enterprise and employment creation emphasis in the initiative and this
has aided its expansion. An organisational innovation within the university involved — the
newly-created Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services — and a partnership between
this and a private company is a notable feature of the case. RIU is supporting the expansion
of the enterprise-based rural health services.
Origins
Livestock is critical to the livelihoods of poor people in many parts of rural Africa.
Unfortunately livestock is also susceptible to a range of diseases (mainly vector-borne in the
tropics), affecting growth and health. Trypanosomiasis (commonly known as sleeping
sickness) is one such disease. It is caused by unicellular protozoan parasites, termed
trypanosomes, which are carried by the tsetse fly in Africa and propagate in the blood and
tissue fluids of their hosts. The disease is also always fatal to humans if left untreated and is
hard to diagnose.
RIU is providing support to build on an initiative known as The Stamp Out Sleeping Sickness
(SOS) project. At the time of writing this has now been operational for 3 years. It is currently
being run through a loose consortium based at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (FVM) at
Makerere University, Uganda. Partners and interested parties include cattle owners, district
veterinary officers, universities (mainly Edinburgh and Makerere), the corporate sector,
donors, and national regulatory authorities. The component being funded by RIU is
supporting a public-private partnership designed to create small veterinary businesses. The
rationale behind this is that unless steps are taken in this direction veterinary care will
continue to remain within the province of charities and NGOs and the “corporate social
responsibility (CSR)” activities of international private companies. As such it will remain a
“dependent” activity, reliant on outside inputs and in this sense not integrated into national
capacity building.
FVM is doing this by creating a new Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services (AFRISA)
linked to (but financially independent of) the University of Makerere. Part of this new
institute is a body designed for in-training community service delivery. The University sees
this as a generic mechanism for equipping graduates for a labour market that is no longer
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satisfied by the supply of traditional university degree-holders. Instead, the demand is for
graduates who not only possess saleable business skills, but are also capable of actually
generating their own jobs virtually from scratch. Under this programme (which is still at a
formative stage) veterinary students spend the final year of an undergraduate degree
entirely in a commercial activity and producing at the end a project report that is assessed
as a key component of the final degree. In the SOS case, and in co-operation with a private
veterinary health products company, final year undergraduates participate in block
treatment of cattle and ancillary spraying activities. A small number of these
undergraduates have been invited to set up small businesses under the supervision of the
private veterinary company.
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5. CONTOURS OF THE BOTTOM-UP BOTTOM-LINE
BUSINESS MODEL AND DEVRES
The organisations and initiatives discussed above, while all being quite different in their
approaches, have certain common features. These features, which relate to their origins,
staffing and ethos of the organisations, separate them from mainstream private sector
activity. This is important because these are not CSR wings of enterprises driven by
conventional motivations and market forces. Instead development-relevant activities are an
integrated component of their business model and strategies. This not only makes them
viable, but also a reliable development partner as developmental activities are integral to
their own sustainability. These features include:
(i) Origins that blend research, enterprise and development expertise
The organisations are all spin-offs from research-based and developmental research-type
activities. Their selection by an aid programme somewhat skews the prevalence of this
characteristic, but it is nonetheless important. Two of the organisations — Real IPM
Company and EcoAgriConsult — have origins in science-based conventional private sector
organisations selling expert service and products for bio-control, which have now shifted or
expanded their attention to make these services and products available to the subsistence
farming sector. Others have emerged out of donor-funded development research projects
that have helped lay a foundation for the establishment of independent companies — for
example, FIPS. In other cases organisations have been drawn into bigger initiatives that are
the continuation of earlier developmental research — for example, the army worm and
sleeping sickness cases. The result is that these organisations and initiatives are led and/or
staffed by individuals with backgrounds that combine enterprise, research and
developmental skills and perspectives. The result is organisations with mission statements
that blend these perspectives with an emphasis given to delivery (of services and products),
innovation (applying and sharing knowledge from research and elsewhere) and welfare (of
poor people). These characteristics are very similar to those of social entrepreneurs, but
seem to be explicitly positioning them in the space between market-based and social
entrepreneurship (see Hall 2010).
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(ii) Blended bottom-up/bottom-line business models
The next feature is a reflection of these mission statements and is manifested by their
business models, which blend revenues from sale of products and services and revenue via
development assistance projects. Some of the organisations have an explicit agenda of
selling services directly to clients (for example, Real IPM Company), but nevertheless also
rely on project-type funding. The poor are explicitly viewed as a market. Others, such as
FIPs-Africa, classify themselves as not-for profit companies that rely exclusively on project
funding, while still retaining many private enterprise features (RIU is supporting a shift to a
more commercial/ cost recovery-based approach). Others again, such as Well Told Story
Ltd., are quite explicit in a desire to rely on both commercial (advertising from soft drinks
and mobile phone companies) and development revenues. What becomes apparent from
these cases is that there is currently sufficient development assistance funding available to
allow such blended business models to work. In other words development assistance
funding is creating a market for the services and products of these DevREs. Innovations in
business-friendly development funding have also probably (and unintentionally) contributed
to the creation of this market and the emergence of DevREs as a new class of private
enterprise. Such funding innovations include the RIU Programme; the Business in
Development network; the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund; and the DFID-supported
Research into Business fund.
(iii) Investment in developing markets of poor people
Most of the organisations and initiatives discussed explicitly recognise that the market of
poor consumers is underdeveloped. The poor as a market are unorganised and this prevents
the articulation of demand for products and services. This means that opportunities for
business are hard to spot and risky. Often the poor simple don’t have information about
products and services and the value of these, and therefore don’t demand them.
Investment in creating this market through promotional activities is too high and risky for
most early stage and small (and even large) businesses. A common feature of the DevREs is
that they use development assistance support to develop this market made up of poor
people. In part this means acting as an intermediary to link poor clients up to existing
information as, for example, FIPS-Africa’s link to research institutes. But more often it also
involves promoting technologies and ideas to the poor so that once exposed to these ideas
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they then become a market for these products and services — for example, the Striga
control products sold by Real IPM. Sleeping sickness control works in a similar way as it is
demonstrated as part of a bundle of livestock health remedies that poor livestock keepers
are willing to pay local self-employed veterinary graduates to administer
6
. The use of public
funds to develop these markets fills a gap in conventional marketing systems that is
preventing the conventional private sector providing products and services to the poor. It is
notable that achieving this has required an interconnected set of institutional and
organisational innovations on the part of donors, private organisations and, in the case of
sleeping sickness control, universities also. (For a comparison see the marketing systems
development approach of IDE; Clark et al, 2003; Hall et al, 2007).
(iv) An explicit self-employment agenda
A number of the initiatives discussed have an explicit employment generation agenda. This
takes the form of enabling local people to set up businesses as field agents to promote new
approaches that the DevREs or its partners can then sell. Alternatively it involves blending of
technology promotion and employment generation, such as in the sleeping sickness case.
What is also important to note is that while this greatly decentralises expertise, often to the
village level, the DevREs themselves often act as a support structure for this capacity, linking
it to a continuous stream of new ideas and products and complementary inputs, such as
credit. The Well Told Story Ltd. example continues a similar theme, but in a slightly different
way. It recognises that in a predominantly young population exposure to ideas for self-
employment might be the only viable option. For demographic reasons one would expect
this focus on self-employment generation to emerge as much more significant in the future.
(v) The centrality of partnerships
Partnerships are now so widely-discussed that it is easy to overlook the significance of such
a mechanism. Partnership, however, seems to be a crucial element of the bottom-
up/bottom-line business model. Partially this reflects the fact that some of the initiatives
that the DevRes are working in are at the interface of public responsibilities and private
6
Morton argues that there may be years when poor livestock keepers will simply be unable to pay for health services and that
this challenges the sustainability of a purely market-supported mechanism. Rather than this being a flaw in the approach, it
points to the need for support from the public purse in difficult times. This, in turn, points to a development model that blends
market-sourced and public sourced revenues. (Morton, 2009)
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interest — for example, the private sector supply of pheromones for control of the
migratory pest army worm, or the use of self-employed vets for sleeping sickness control.
Other cases illustrate the way partnerships are used to bring together different ideas and
expertise — for example, the way the Real IPM Company example has brought in scientific
partners who have expertise and informal proprietary rights to technologies. This has then
been blended with the marketing (and technical expertise) of the Real IPM Company. A
related aspect of this is the way the staff of the DevREs, with their blended backgrounds of
enterprise, research and development, have wide professional networks and feel quite
comfortable in all three domains. This appears to reduce barriers to partnership and allows
them to take advantage of such collective approaches.
(vi) Delivery of impact at scale
While no systematic evaluation has been undertaken of the impact of the DevREs discussed,
for the activities under the RIU programme impact projections have been made (see Table 2
on the next page). Even if these are relatively optimistic, once combined with the wider set
of activities that DevREs are involved in it suggests that this class of organisation is already
making a major contribution to development goals.
Table 2. RIU Projections of Impacts from its Best Bet Projects
RIU
programme/project
Scale and type of impact on small-scale
farmers
Projected total
number people
to be impacted7
Best Bet
FIPS-Africa
1.5 million farming families in East Africa
benefit from increased food security through
improved access to improved crop varieties and
farming practices
7,500,000
Best Bet
Well Told Story
8 million young Kenyans reached exposed to
improved agricultural practices and ideas for
incoming generating activities through multi-
media communication initiative
8,000,000
Best Bet
Real IPM
48,000 farming households; 240,000 people
have first-hand experience of Stopstriga on
their own plots
4,900,000 people exposed to radio messages
about Stopstriga
240,000
4,900,000
7
One farming household is assumed to consist of 5 people
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Best Bet
CABI - EcoAgriConsult
Armyworm control
120 villages covered by improved armyworm
forecasting and response systems; equivalent to
12,000 farming households
60,000
Best Bet exemplar
Stamp Out Sleeping
Sickness
10,000,000 Ugandans protected from risk of
sleeping sickness
10,000,000
Source: RIU 2010
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6. ROLE OF DEVRES IN AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION
The discussion in Section 5 identified 6 potential roles for the private sector in agricultural
innovation systems. To what extent are the cited DevREs assuming these roles?
(i) As a source of R&D expertise: A number of these organisations have
considerable in-house R&D expertise. Real IPM Company and EcoAgriConsult
are obvious examples with their bio-control research application expertise. In
general the cases observed, because of a common history in emerging in
association with development research, all have staff with research and
technical expertise. Even if they are no longer actively engaged in research
they can identify research problems accurately and draw on their
professional networks to access R&D expertise and services to address these.
(ii) As a client-responsive mechanism for distributing products and services,
embodying the results of scientific research and other types of information:
This was probably the most common role observed with an element of this in
all the DevREs and associated initiatives observed.
(iii) As conduits to high-value markets and as a source of information about the
nature of demand and regulation in these markets: It would be expected that
an organisation playing such a role would be part of a value chain connected
to distant markets. There is no such organisation in these examples, although
it doesn’t discount the possibility for this to occur (Fairtrade companies like
Tropical Whole Food would be an example (Hall 1995). A related role is that
played by Real IPM Company and EcoAgriConsult in their wider set of
activities (enabling pesticide reduction in horticultural production), which
have been a response to regulatory environments, particularly those in
Europe.
(iv) As a source of new business models that can efficiently service the needs of
large markets of poor people: The selection of these DevREs was partially on
the basis of them having a business model that served the poor, so it is not
surprising that the DevREs and associated initiatives observed here are
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playing this role. Perhaps it is more useful to note how such business models
had been developed. FIPS-Africa, for example, came out of piloting in-
development research projects. Real IPM Company was a commercial model
applied to developmental objectives. Well Told Story was a genuine hybrid
from its inception. What is notable is that the central entrepreneurial figure
has made a personal commitment to service the needs of the poor and this
ethos is inseparable from their business models.
(v) As a mechanism for the delivery of services and products that sit at the
interface of public responsibility and private interest, such as agricultural
extension and responses to livestock disease and pest outbreaks: Again, all of
the DevREs have elements that involve an agricultural extension-like role
(traditionally the preserve of the public sector). FIPS-Africa places great
emphasis on empowering local field staff to deliver information to farmers,
although (as discussed below) this is a much more contemporary and
expanded interpretation of the role of extension. In other cases, such as Real
IPM Company, extension-like promotion of new technologies and agronomic
practices is part of the bigger agenda of developing new markets for Striga
control seed treatments. The example of EcoAgriConsult and sleeping
sickness both demonstrate the way human health and migratory pest
outbreaks (a traditional preserve of the public sector) are being dealt with
through consortia that include DevREs.
(vi) As a broker or intermediary agent, making links, negotiating partnerships and
communicating information aspirations and agendas: The cases illustrate a
number of different aspects of this critical role in connecting up innovation
systems. FIPS-Africa plays exactly the role that Klerkx et al (2009) discuss in
terms of innovation brokering. FIPS links farmers to research organisations
and to the private sector. It negotiates release of varieties suitable for the
subsistence sector. And it persuades input supply companies to produce seed
and fertiliser packs at a scale suitable for this sector. It also engages in policy
debates on behalf of farmers to address innovation framework conditions.
However, it also suffers from the revenue problems that Klerkx et al explain
relate to the provision of an important yet intangible service. As a result FIPS
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has the business model that, of all those discussed here, is most dependent
on development project funding. In other cases the DevREs or their
associated initiatives are acting as a framework that links field agents and
expert services providers with central sources of expertise and new ideas.
Finally, Well Told Story Ltd. plays an almost classic information dissemination
role that, while no longer seen as the main task in the contemporary vision of
agricultural extension, is nevertheless a critical one.
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7. CONCLUDING POINTS
What, then, is the significance of DevREs for research and innovation investments? A caveat
to the following comments is that this is obviously quite a small sample of organisations and
the activities associated with RIU at a formative stage. Nevertheless, the portfolios of
various challenge programmes in operation mentioned earlier in this paper suggest that
there are many examples of this type of organisation and that therefore it is of sufficient
importance to warrant policy attention by development planners — particularly those
interested in mobilising research and innovation for development purposes.
At a very simplistic level it can be seen that the bottom-up/bottom-line business model
embodied in DevREs can be used to help transfer research-derived ideas and products to
poor farmers and consumers. This simplistic interpretation undervalues such initiatives and
could misinform relevant areas of policy. The much more important role of DevREs agents
involves strengthening the capacity in an innovation system sense. That is to say that they
have a critical intermediation role, creating links between different elements of the
innovation system and allowing it to transmit ideas and respond to opportunities and
challenges with new ideas and solutions. The cases here also demonstrate an
intermediation role in policy arenas — see, for example, the negotiation of pesticide
regulatory regimes or the policy changes associated with graduate employment in Uganda.
This is not to diminish their role as sources of R&D, as suppliers of products and services,
etc., as outlined above. Rather, it is to emphasise the importance of a brokerage role that is
currently not played by any other actor within the African agricultural innovation
architecture. It could be argued that public agricultural extension has had a mandate of
intermediation, linking up farmers and researchers. Unfortunately not only has extension
largely struggled in this respect, but worse still its mandate and role has not been expanded
to encompass the wider set of “linking” and intermediation roles that are required in
contemporary African agriculture. This involves linking to markets and market demands, to
private sector players in the value chain, to policy actors and much more. Even if there was
policy agreement on assigning such an expanded role to public extension it is highly unlikely
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that its structures and institutions could achieve the radical transformation required (Rivera
and Sulaiman, 2009). NGOs sometimes substitute for extension, but often they lack
technical expertise and networks and have ideological encumbrances (for example, Scoones
and Thompson, 2009).
But the message here is not about the role of the private sector as a substitute for the public
sector in a role of connecting up different actors. Instead it needs to be seen as an
entrepreneurial strategy central to the business model — the initiatives all rely on the
DevRes being embedded in a network and the DevRes often need to knit together these
consortia to make their business models work. For example, Real IPM has developed strong
links with both international and local research organisations. The EcoAgriConsult army
worm case involves a complex consortium of public and private actors. Not only do these
networks create capacity to address the immediate challenges and opportunities at which
they are addressed, but more importantly they build up experience and a tradition of public,
private and development actors working in partnerships to achieve both developmental as
well as profit objectives.
This sort of institutional change — i.e., partnering as a routine way of working — is currently
the “rate limiting step” in the operationalisation of ideas such as inclusive business
approaches and a raft of other public-private sector-based innovation models. The value of
RIU’s approach is that it not only helps promote developmentally-relevant business models,
but, in addition, because of its focus on this new type of private enterprise that is
partnership-dependent, it widens opportunities for different public, private and
development actors to gain experience of working in mixed consortia at the intersect of
profit and public good. RIU-type interventions will, therefore, make their most important
long-term contribution in terms of stimulating the types of institutional change needed to
strengthen the capacity of African agricultural innovation systems.
How does this translate into wider policy messages? The major message is not that the
private sector in the form of DevREs can substitute for the old technology transfer role of
public extension — although this is only one of the things that they can do. However, it does
seem to suggest that DevREs — in their diversity of forms and roles within wider initiatives
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— can act as an important vehicle in strengthening overall innovation capacity. This is
strengthening capacity in terms of an explicit intermediation or brokering role, linking
others together. It is also strengthening capacity by using those intermediation and brokers’
skills as part of a partnership-dependent business model that has the wider effect of
broadening experiences of working in new ways throughout the sector. Together this
suggests that public investors interested in promoting research and innovation for
development could achieve many of their goals by providing support to DevREs and the
bottom-up/bottom-line business models that these embody. Not all countries are likely to
have the necessary diversity of DevREs needed to cover all public sector responsibilities in
promoting research and innovation. The cases in this paper, however, suggest that providing
challenge fund financing for private participation in development agendas seems to have a
catalytic effect in stimulating the emergence of a diversity of these types of organisations.
The RIU experience also has some more specific lessons. Programmes of this sort need to
make special efforts to identify opportunities associated with DevREs and emerging business
models. This might involve scouting for opportunities as well as novel selection procedures
that mimic venture capital investment decision-making, and that integrate developmental
objectives. Into use programmes should not be based on the assumption that research has
been completed and that technological opportunities await commercialisation. The RIU
experience suggests that the real task is to identify business models that are successful in
using ideas and which integrate research expertise to allow a continuous process of
innovation. Sometimes this will involve companies based around a specific technological
theme, such as the Real IPM, and other times it will be more generic, such as FIPS. Both,
however, have strong links into research. In other words unlike research and extension the
“into use” activities are not a messenger to transmit research results, but actually a new
way of integrating research into the innovation process. Anything that RIU can learn on how
to do this better will be extremely valuable as it could lay the foundation for a new
enterprise-led approach to innovation for development.
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