Knowledge and Innovation Approaches to Out Scale Sorghum Adoption in Africa

One of the biggest challenges of African countries has been perpetual low agricultural productivity regardless of the availability of productivity-enhancing technologies from research and development. Improved varieties of climate-smart crops such as sorghum and millets in combination with best agronomic practices such as in-field water harvesting and integrated soil fertility management practices have the potential to improve the livelihoods of farmers in the drylands. However, dissemination and scaling approaches have limited the adoption of such technologies by farmers. This chapter provides a discussion on winning strategies for scaling the adoption of proven technologies in farming communities. Peer-reviewed publications from reputable journals and grey literature on projects were systematically reviewed to understand common strategies for disseminating and out-scaling sorghum technologies to farmers in Africa. Findings from this chapter suggest that dissemination and scaling will be most effective when it is participatory and backed by a supportive policy environment. Multi-stakeholder participatory approaches embedded within national programmes which are farmer-centric and market-oriented will lead to more adoption. We conclude that the use of participatory pluralistic strategies will go a long way in increasing the adoption rates.