A Partnership Approach for Effective Engagement of the Private Sector in Agricultural Research and Development

The partnership arrangement in agricultural research and development has been driving by the public sector with concentration on the research and extension institutions. This has considerably hindered the development of the sector such that the technologies that are generated suffer low adoption and the impact is largely limited by institutional and infrastructural constraints. Recent agricultural research and development discourse have indicated a shortfall in the way agricultural research and development activities are conducted and suggested a model that engages all the required partners to foster the development of the sector. The private sector are of particular importance in this regards, but their engagement and partnership are not direct as their expectation and motives for profit are quite different from that of the public sector where public goods are generated. Managing this dichotomy in output require a different way of doing things. To offer a solution, this opinion article reviews the characteristics of the private sector stakeholders in agriculture, with regards to important issues that characterizes their effective engagement. It suggested an approach for engaging this sector and recommended the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development Concept (IAR4D) and its innovation platform on which the private sector can effectively be engaged to contribute to agricultural research and development.