Module 2 - Colombia: Decentralized, Demand-Driven, Competitive Technology Generation

By the early 1990s, the institutional model of the traditional public system of agricultural research and extension in many Latin American countries had declined in its effectiveness. Despite working fairly well in the past in delivering technology for major commodities, the model faced new challenges to which it was unable to respond. Challenges included the development of sustainable production systems, resource conservation, processing, and markets and exports. These problems resulted partly from an overly centralized, highly bureaucratic research system that was not well linked to its clients.

In the early 1990s, the Government of Colombia committed itself to decentralizing technology development and transfer to bring applied R&E closer to the priority problems of target beneficiaries, who would participate in characterizing, prioritizing, and solving their problems.

Project Objectives and Description

In 1995, the National Agricultural Technology Development Project (PRONATTA) was designed with World Bank support to assist this decentralization process, by offering funding for regional research and institution building. The project’s four key objectives were to promote a pluralistic technology system, support demand-driven and decentralized approaches, diversify financing through cofinancing by users and research providers, and provide incentives for reforming public R&D. Two program components involved:

• Creation of a competitive fund, in which resources are assigned to proposals responding to needs of small rural producers.
  
  
• Institutional development, aimed primarily at building local institutional mechanisms to allow stakeholders, particularly small-scale producers, to participate in addressing problems of agricultural system productivity and competitiveness.

For assigning funds, the competitive fund used four criteria: the use of a systems approach, addressing sustainability, participation of end-users in technology development, and building farmer capacity.

Implementation was decentralized to five regions where local “nodes” were established and linked into regional “networks” to coordinate research activities. The nodes are informal groups open to research institutions, farmer groups, NGOs, private sector, and officials of departmental secretariats of agriculture. A total of 340 organizations have participated in the nodes, and an additional 160 in thematic networks that operate in parallel with the nodes. Nodes develop lists of priority research issues and project profiles, and at the network level consolidate these for the region. These priorities are submitted to the PRONATTA Regional Coordination Unit.