To boost agricultural and agrifood innovations, effective Innovation Support Services (ISS) must be developed in an accessible and sustainable way, in collaboration with either public or private service providers.

SERVinnov’s specific objectives are to assess existing innovation support services (types of providers, services and interventions), to analyze their relevance and efficiency. SERVInnov will characterize ISS in three countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Madagascar, and within innovation case studies related to the improvement of agriculture, sustainable intensification and agrifood systems. The approach that we propose first makes it possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses of innovation support services with respect to innovation challenges in the country concerned and second, in collaboration with ISS providers and policy makers, to explore how gaps in the supply of ISS can be filled by developing new skills or by improving the structure of existing innovation service providers.

The overall SERVInnov approach will be participatory and reflexive, similar to an action-research approach. This implies combining conceptual and empirical approaches. The concepts will be generated in a transdisciplinary way by involving researchers from different disciplines together with practitioners (Note, the terms ‘practitioners’ and ‘providers’ have the same meaning in this proposal). The empirical part will be based on a multi-actor, inclusive and participatory approach and will include ISS providers (public, private, NGOs, FBOs) and innovators (farmers, enterprises with a focus on women and youth, farmer organizations).

SERVInnov intends to substantially increase the effectiveness of innovation support services at all levels of Agricultural Innovation Systems across food systems and along value chains which have impacts on FNSSA. SERVInnov is based on the theory of voluntary modification of behaviour and related concepts from agricultural extension which define advisory services such as the co-production of knowledge and skills to enhance clients’ self-determined problem-solving capacities.

SERVInnov consortium partners will cooperate in a way that enhances their diagnosis, implementation and training capacities with regard to effective ISS. Through the use of participatory diagnosis and assessment tools for effective ISS, SERVInnov partners will raise the awareness of their case study partners and improve their capacities through training. In concrete terms, we have identified four main situations in which capacities are improved. The first is during the co-design of the frameworks. Researchers and practitioners learn about the empirical and theoretical frameworks from each other.