Partners in Technology Generation and Transfer: Linkages between Research and Farmers' Organizations in Three Selected African Countries

Three countries in sub-Saharan Africa were studied: Burkina Faso, Ghana and Kenya. There are differences among the three countries of the study, but the five major types of farmers’ organizations/groups were found in each of them. Only a few of these organizations have explicit policies to link with research and among these, only one organization is fully implementing its policies. The others, for various reasons, use informal mechanisms to gain access to agricultural technologies that they disseminate through publications and seminars. Most of the organizations/groups do not have explicit policies because they are not aware that they can link with research, or they think that the transaction costs are too high for the potential benefits. The research institutions also lack explicit linkage policies, because of their research strategies, a lack of awareness, and/or perceived transaction costs. In practice, however, they do have linkages with farmers’ organizations/groups, but these linkages are not effective because of the attributes of the mechanisms used, the context in which they are used, and the way these linkages are managed. Enhancing the power of farmers’ organizations through institutional changes, clearly defining explicit linkage policies, and putting in place sounder linkage strategies are all necessary to improve these linkages. This will, however, require the managers of the agricultural knowledge and information systems to become more sensitive to the importance of linkages between research and farmers’ organizations