Richard Hawkins, Robert Booth, Colletah Chitsike, Emily Twinamasiko, Moses Tenywa, George Karanja, Thembi Ngcobo and Aart-Jan Verschoor

Since 2004, research and development (R&D) partners in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa have been working with the International Centre for development oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA) to improve the capacity for rural innovation. The overall strategy followed in all three countries consists of four main components:

1 building inter-institutional steering groups that increase awareness of the need for collective action and oversee joint capacity-strengthening (CS) initiatives;

2 building a national team of facilitators that designs and implements in-country CS programmes;

3 strengthening the skills of current professionals and the ability of their institutions to work together to promote rural innovation; and

4 reviewing and revising the academic teaching programmes that produce future professionals.