Understanding people, their livelihood systems, demands and impact of innovation

Abstract

Understanding people, their livelihood systems, demands and impact of innovations to generate and ensure utilisation of accurate information and knowledge on the people and their livelihoods in designing research interventions. The contribution of this theme (referred to as 'diagnostics' for simplicity) to the research process is traditionally seen as falling at the beginning and end of the research sequence. However, knowing that research is a continuous process with iterative, sequential steps or stages, the contribution of diagnostics is actually throughout the process, and results are informative not only to researchers but to many stakeholders. The synthesis considers recent changes in diagnostics approaches and procedures, from commodity and farming systems to livelihoods analyses and impact assessment. Advantages, disadvantages and implementation challenges of different approaches presented in the papers are reviewed and analysed, and the implications of new directions in diagnosis & assessment for IAR4D brought out. Major trends reviewed include: the increased use of participatory methods and social learning processes in research; increased use of more comprehensive, integrated systems and livelihoods approaches; the improved blending of R&D to become R4D and the increased attention to research processes; and the increased importance of amalgamating and negotiating demand and the associated expansion of the methods and tools