Prolinnova Information

Prolinnova was conceived in December 1999, when Southern and Northern NGOs - supported by GFAR, the NGO Committee (NGOC) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs - met in Rambouillet, France, to consider how participatory approaches to ARD based on local initiatives could be scaled up. At this meeting, ETC EcoCulture, a Netherlands-based NGO, was asked to facilitate the launching of a Prolinnova programme built up from country level. NGOs in Africa and Asia facilitated multi-stakeholder design of Country Programmes (CPs) which, in turn, designed international activities to reinforce their own activities. The Prolinnova partners are developing country-specific ways to: document local innovations and experiments by resource-poor farmers and communities; strengthen partnerships between farmers, development agents, research scientists and other actors to refine local innovations and to encourage others to try them out; create wider awareness of and skills in participatory innovation development (PID) through a variety of learning mechanisms; develop and expand mechanisms that give farmers more influence over formal research, extension and education; and integrate local innovation and PID approaches into formal agricultural research, development and education institutions. PROLINNOVA seeks to: demonstrate the effectiveness of user-led innovation for sustainable development build strong farmer-extension-researcher partnerships enhance capacities of farmers, researchers and extension agents in participatory approaches pilot decentralised funding mechanisms to promote local innovation stimulate national and regional policy dialogue to favour local innovation set up platforms for reflection, analysis and learning about promoting local innovation integrate participatory approaches to farmer-led innovation and experimentation into research, extension and education institutions.