Brigid Letty from the Institute of Natural Resources (INR) in South Africa, a member of Prolinnova-South Africa, attended the GLOBELICS (Global Network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems)Conference in Argentina in November 2011. She presented a paper on “Assessing the impact of grassroots innovation in agriculture” (Brigid Letty, Zanele Shezi & Maxwell Mudhara), which explored two cases of grassroots innovation that had been supported through Prolinnova and FAIR (Farmer Access to Innovation Resources).
The work on this paper was undertaken as part of a UNU-MERIT Project on Research and Training Support to Build African Capacity in Science, Technology, and Innovation Indicators, funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Grant 104753. This project also funded Brigid’s participation in the conference. The paper was focused on understanding what indicators could be used to track the incidence and impact of participatory innovation processes. Such evidence is needed in order to be able to influence policymakers about the need for a greater allocation of resources to support grassroots innovation.
