Post-Harvest Innovation Learning Alliance (PHILA)

PHILA's Inception

Post-harvest innovation: enhancing performance at the interface of supply and utilisation

PHILA was originally conceived as a vehicle to explore the institutional learning and change components of the project, Post-harvest innovation: enhancing performance at the interface of supply and utilisation. This project aspires to generate and promote new ideas as to how national innovation systems can be better mobilised to sustain the uptake and adoption of post-harvest knowledge by end-users, especially poor farmers (project purpose).

Project hypotheses

The central research propositions that the project set out to address are that:

  • Current practices by statutory post-harvest service providers and other intermediaries are failing to distinguish between the need and priorities of different households and therefore failing to meet their respective demands.

  • Researchable constraints and opportunities exist at the current interface of supply and utilisation and that insights from these could help facilitate improvement in the shaping and delivery ofpost-harvest information by post-harvest knowledge managers.

And specifically with respect to institutional learning and change, that:

  • Undertaking action research within an alliance of practitioners, researchers, policy makers and activists will lead to greater impact and facilitate scaling-up through, amongst other things, development of broader ownership of concepts and process, enhancement of local capacity (particularly for adaptive management), and the emergence of locally appropriate solutions or innovations.

Project approach: the learning alliance (LA)

Recent approaches to the up-scaling of technologies - products and processes - point to its dependence on the activities and interactions of a diversity of key individuals and organisations. These ideas correspond with the experience of the project partners in earlier post-harvest work. Promotion of an initially technology-oriented project - use of diatomaceous earths - was found to be expedited by the early and progressive enlistment of a diverse range of players (e.g. farmers, extension staff, regulators, policy advisors, private sector organisations, trainers, communicators etc.). Engagement was built on overlapping interests and working together, and often entailed local capacity-building.

This experience was subsequently formalised in the Post-harvest innovation: enhancing performance at the interface of supply and utilisation project, for which a learning alliance approach was adopted as the main mechanism for undertaking and sharing research activities and findings.

The project design links each of the planned project ouputs to one or more sets of strategic activities, or case studies. These in turn have been used to provide new opportunities for PHILA members, often working in new partnerships, to explore new ways of working. A fuller description of the case studies associated with each output objective can be found here.

Project outputs

To test the above hypotheses and realise its longer-term aims the project was designed around four basic output objectives:

1. Institutional learning and change: The first output objective relates to exploring ways that learning alliance members might better relate to each other and learn together - doing things differently:

To advance improvements in understanding and effectiveness of ‘learning alliances’ (LAs) as agents of change.

2. Knowledge management by service providers and supporting research: The second output objective focuses on assessing current service provision and supporting research initiatives:

To develop practical ‘insights’ from current working practices, and to generate ‘improved practice’ recommendations.

3. Demand and utilisation: The third output objective examines the demand side of the equation, focusing on farmers in the general context, and on commercial enterprises in the narrower context of manufacturing and distributing PH storage protectants:

To explore and improve the ability of (i.) farmers, and (ii.) commercial enterprises, to access and utilise relevant PH information.

4. Policy and implementation strategies: The fourth output objective, builds on the findings of the first three, and relates to optimising the impact of new knowledge on the national PH innovation system:

To generate and promote recommendations for policy and implementation strategies that will improve the performance of PH service providers & researchers and enhance related decision-making by farmers and commercial enterprises.

Project timeframe

The project, which nominally commenced in January 2005 (although financial resources were not available in-country before March), ended in January 2006. PHILA however, is set to continue, with the memberships in Tanzania and Zimbabwe drafting strategic action plans at the respective review workshops held in November and December 2005 - review workshop reports here.