After many international aid agencies failed to replicate the green revolution model in Africa despite billions of dollars they spent, what did they do wrong? They still did not ask themselves whether there was a need for developing not ‘the’ model but a variety of models building upon African genius and ground-level wisdom. Such a question would have taken away the jobs of thousands of so called developmental experts, consultants and the chemical industry, which wanted to sell fertilizers and pesticides there.
 
What can Honey Bee Network contribute to this developmental debate? It needs just a click at http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/honeybee_database.php to use open access Honey Bee database of people's creativity and innovation to find out thousands of local solutions people have developed without any help from outside. Write 'Africa' in the search window and one will find many examples since 1995 of practices that farmers had developed to solve storage problem of grains, cassava or milk or controlling pests or improving productivity in different ways.

Interested in innovation? Read more columns by Prof Anil K Gupta here.

Am I saying that farmers’ knowledge can solve all problems by itself? No, that is not my intention at all. My point is that a blending of people's ideas with institutional science can generate many viable options, which by any one approach to the exclusion of others may not. Department of Science and Technology, government of India, institutionalised the learning from creative people at grassroots through establishment of National Innovation Foundation based on Honey Bee Network's contribution in 2000. Can this model which is showing excellent results in China, Malaysia and many other parts of the world also deliver results in Africa? My submission is, yes, it can, provided we learn the right lessons from India.
 
Possible building blocks of renaissance in Africa:
 
a)    Reforms of public policy to unleash entrepreneurial potential of local communities and individuals. In South Africa, roadside vending is still banned.  The skill ladder has not evolved, either one has excellent artisan technologies or European scale high tech alternatives. Unless a skill ladder is developed enabling people to either to self-select the journey from road side shack to shop to workshop to small or medium industry or enable markets with public support to do that, the technological base for innovation will remain feeble. 

b)    The institutional imperviousness to the ideas from common people must be diluted if not eliminated through conscious provisions for participatory research.

c)    Students should be mobilised during their summer or winter vacation to look for ‘deviant researchers’ or ‘odd balls’ or grassroots innovators and traditional knowledge holders, document their stories and bring it to a common Honey Bee Network kind of platform. 

d)    Large scale on farm trials (not demonstrations) must be undertaken on low cost, frugal and affordable technologies either developed by people themselves or valorised by the scientists. Deviant researchers in the formal sector should also be empowered to pursue research on extremely affordable technologies.

e)    One should recognise the limits of the chemical and large mechanical technologies and promote non-chemical pest control and small and light machineries amenable to fabrication and repair at local level. For animal care, similar leads from traditional pastoralists or the Honey Bee Network database should be used. 

f)      Distributed knowledge generation and management has to become the watchword for technological transformation. The tendency to first destroy the soil, reduce agro-biodiversity and pollute the water and then find ways to remedy that does not make sense. 

g)    The functional foods implying the foods grown on mineral rich soils to contribute towards human health is a very important future possibility that cannot be ignored. Similarly, nutraceuticals based on agricultural systems can be a very viable link in the soil, plant, animal and human health chain.
 
Establishing dedicated labs and workshops to work on people’s ideas is the need of the hour. The Honey Bee Network is willing to cooperate with curious, compassionate and creative minds in formal and informal sector. The Namibian Innovation Business Council took an initiative recently to forge linkages with Honey Bee Network and a senior colleague visited them to lay the grounds of cooperation. Several visits have been made to South Africa and an exhibition of innovations was organised in Limpopo but follow up somehow has been tardy.
 
An Africa specific model with local variations will have to be developed which builds upon the strength of the local communities in managing water, soil, pastures, biodiversity, food processing, etc. Many years ago, SRISTI had organized an international competition for grassroots innovations in collaboration with IFAD. A farmer named Auta Gravetas was awarded at Global Knowledge Conference in Kuala Lumpur for having discovered use of lantana leaves for extending the shelf life of sweet potato slices, enhancing the self-provisioning of the food. There are a large number of such innovators waiting to be discovered, respected, recognized and rewarded.

Can we really wait?