New Publication: Innovation systems and affordances in climate-smart agriculture

Significant international investment and effort are put into delivering benefits to smallholder farmers through climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions. However, there is a poor understanding of how smallholder farmers access beneficial outcomes from changes in agricultural practices beyond narrow and simplistic metrics, such as adoption rates and yield increases. Furthermore, binary notions of adopters and non-adopters provide a poor basis for understanding innovation within complex farming systems.

In this paper, AFRICAP scientists present their findings from exploring agricultural innovations that happened in the context of two CSA interventions in the Tanga Region of Tanzania. The paper also talks about necessary interventions to be taken with an appreciation of context and affordances from the outset and shares the importance of CSA interventions seeking to build capacity from the very beginning.

Read more on our initiative in the Muheza district of Tanga.

Image courtesy: Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash