Pro-Poor Innovation Systems

The document is organized as follows. Section 2 presents an outline of the innovation systems framework, adapted to the discussion of rural development work such as that promoted by IFAD, in contrast to its more frequent use in the context of debates on science and technology. Section 3 discusses some important trends and changes in rural innovation systems, from the perspective of rural poverty reduction and rural development. Section 4 highlights some opportunities for pro-poor innovation, according to a framework that takes into consideration the heterogeneity of rural poverty. Section 5 concludes by asking a number of questions, with the expectation that they may contribute to a debate on what is it that IFAD can do to be more effective in promoting pro-poor rural innovation systems.