Bottom-up, Bottom-line: Development-Relevant Enterprises in East Africa and their Significance for Agricultural Innovation
Andy Hall, N. Clark & Andy Frost
#2010-042
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the
private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural
sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the
emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would
seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction
and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that
sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental
activities of government programmes, NGOs and development projects. This
type of enterprise activity is not corporate social responsibility, but
an altogether new type of business model that is blending
entrepreneurial skills and perspectives with mission statements that
seek to both serve the needs of poor customers and address their
welfare. The ethos is both "bottom-up" and "bottom-line". This paper
classifies these organisations as Development-Relevant Enterprises
(DevREs).The experience of the Research into Use (RIU) programme
discussed in this paper suggests that supporting these types of
entrepreneurial activity may form the basis of a new mode of development
assistance aimed at using innovation for both social and economic
purposes.
Key words: Development-Relevant Enterprises, Agricultural Research,
Agricultural Innovation, East Africa
JEL Codes: N5, N57, O13, O19, O31, Q13, Q16
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872