Enhancing ICT Use for Agricultural Innovation Systems
Dr. Tugrul Temel,
National Agricultural Research Organizations (NAROs) operate in a continuously evolving environment, facing new demands for agricultural knowledge and information from a broad range of policy, market and external actors. Reform from within NAROs has been initiated to respond to these demands; however, it has been slow and often only partially successful due to challenges faced in (1) linking their research and innovation strategies to wider science and technology policies, in particular to R&D strategies of other sectors and (2) planning and implementing organizational innovations for taking advantage of new technologies, particularly ICTs, to link themselves to information and knowledge networks at the national, regional and global levels.
These challenges set the stage for further research in two areas. The first is to develop a framework that can be used in designing innovation strategies to address Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The second is to assess the role of ICTs in the emergence of new organizational forms that would make NAROs more effective within networks. In my presentation, I would provide a perspective to address these issues, as well as an approach to quantify the contribution of ICT to system performance. Finally, the merits of adopting the innovation systems framework will be discussed in relation to ICTs’ impact on achieving MDGs.
Speaker:
Dr. Temel has worked as economist at the FAO in Italy from 2005 to 2006. Before that he was visiting professor at the Wagening University, department of Agricultural Economics-Rural Policy.
He obtained his PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in 1995. His specializations are in:
- Technological Change, Growth and Economic Development (policies for poverty alleviation) ;
- Financial Economics (portfolio and debt management, bank supervision and monitoring, monetary and exhange rate policies);
- Quantitative Methods (applied general equilibrium modelling) and
- Regional Focus (transition countries, SSA, Middle East, North Africa and the EU).
Venue: UNU-MERIT, 12:00 hours
Date: 10 January 2007
