Vol. 15 No. 2 (2020): The unusual suspect? The private sector in knowledge partnerships for agricultural and rural development

Abstract

This Special Issue focuses specifically on contributions on how the private sector, through the
design and organization of partnerships that strive to move beyond ?business as usual?,
contributes - or fails or struggles to contribute - to transform agricultural and rural
development towards the achievement of the SDGs. The contributions to this Special Issue
are diverse in terms of geographical location (South East Asia, Europe and Africa, Benin,
Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda) but also in terms of themes: value chains, knowledge
management strategies, research processes, knowledge brokering, institutional spaces,
knowledge networks and governance. A number of the contributions to the Special Issue
provide examples of how collabration between the private sector and other actors, including
marginalized women and small farmers, can be facilitated and give value to research
processes and in terms of scaling up innovations. The contributions attracted and codeveloped
with the authors include analytical frameworks, typologies of partnerships,
benchmarking practices and mapping of the intellectual assets of the private sector. The
contributions do not lead to the immediate conclusion that the private sector is a ?magic
bullet? in global development. Instead, they lead to the conclusion that the private sector does
have a role to play but that this role requires facilitation and brokerage to be effective.