Innovation for development: RAAKS
20 March 2006
Development is all about change, about involving people and taking their interests into account. However, our learning processes can be an impediment to finding innovative solutions. They tend to be one-sided, hampering an integrated approach to development issues. This observation has led to the development of the RAAKS approach. This participatory action-research methodology helps a diverse range of stakeholders to work and learn together, enhancing communication and information exchange and planning for action that will support innovation. KIT recently updated its mini-website on RAAKS.
The acronym RAAKS stands for Rapid (or relaxed) Appraisal of Agricultural Knowledge Systems. RAAKS was developed in the 1990s by researchers at Wageningen University, and was originally aimed at action research in agriculture. However, over time, it has been widely applied to natural resources management and research and development in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. It provides a flexible and participatory approach to improving innovative performance in agriculture, natural resource management and rural development.
RAAKS originated in the analysis that social and institutional learning processes tend to pose an impediment to finding solutions that are innovative, feasible and sustainable. Employing linear, exclusive and one-dimensional ways of thinking, these processes prevent us from learning to incorporate the multiple rationalities of different stakeholders, which may include farmers, researchers, policy-makers and others. In fact, social and institutional learning processes – knowledge itself – can be understood and managed in ways that enhance rather than frustrate innovative thinking.
RAAKS does not provide answers directly, but it does furnish an approach to forming a team and to examining the social organization of the system in which parties find themselves. RAAKS is first of all a tool for organizations and institutions that feel pressed to improve their performance with respect to innovation. It may also prove useful for organizations and institutions wishing to intervene in the interest of particular developments and hence to guide innovation in a specific direction.
KIT’s mini-website on RAAKS presents an extensive introduction to the methodology and its theoretical underpinning, how to use and implement it, field- and other experiences, downloadable documents, exercises and a glossary.
This digital publication has been developed and compiled by KIT Information & Library Services. It forms part of a series of English-language mini-websites exploring development-relevant subjects in the Institute’s work fields of culture, health (including HIV/AIDS and reproductive healthcare), agriculture and rural development, gender issues, development policy and strategies, and knowledge and information management. KIT creates five such specials per year, while keeping existing specials up-to-date. Twenty specials on a range of subjects have appeared thus far.